A French Bulldog named Nord Boss stands an the back of his owner Natasha while they skateboard in the Sokolniki Park in Moscow, Russia on October 14, 2020. (Photo by Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters)

Singer Liam Payne’s girlfriend, model Maya Henry, 21, posed in a slashed red gown as she attended an event at The Ritz in the French capital on October 4, 2021. (Photo by Beretta/Sims/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A motorist drives a car overloaded with vegetables and fruit on a street in Yaounde on July 25, 2022, prior to the French president's visit. (Photo by Ludovic Marin/AFP Photo)

Australian professional boxer Ebanie Bridges during the weigh in at The Queens Hotel, Leeds, United Kingdom on Friday, March 25, 2022. (Photo by Nigel French/PA Wire)

What do superheroes do when they’re not busy fighting bad guys and saving the world from destruction? Perhaps they’re drawing strength alone in the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. That’s the premise of French photographer Benoit Lapray‘s photo-manipulation series “The Quest for the Absolute.”

“Josephine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer, and actress. Nicknamed the “Bronze Venus”, the “Black Pearl”, and even the “Créole Goddess” in anglophone nations.

Baker was the first African American female to star in a major motion picture and to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer. She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States (she was offered the unofficial leadership of the movement by Coretta Scott King in 1968 following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, but turned it down), for assisting the French Resistance during World War II and for being the first American-born woman to receive the French military honor, the Croix de guerre”.

Photo: American entertainer Josephine Baker in costume for her famous “banana dance”. Baker was an overnight sensation when she arrived in Paris in the mid-1920s. (Photo by Walery/Getty Images)

French actress Roxane Mesquida (L) and Josephine De La Baume exchange a kiss on the red carpet prior the screening of “The company you keep” during the 69th Venice Film Festival on September 6, 2012 at Venice Lido. “The company you keep” is presented out of competition. (Photos by Tiziana Fabi/Gabriel Bouys/Christine Pettinger/AFP Photo)

“Romain de Tirtoff (23 November 1892 – 21 April 1990) was a Russian-born French artist and designer known by the pseudonym Erté, the French pronunciation of his initials, R.T. He was a diversely talented 20th-century artist and designer who flourished in an array of fields, including fashion, jewellery, graphic arts, costume and set design for film, theatre, and opera, and interior decor”. – Wikipedia. Photo: Romain de Tirtoff (Erte) – “Symphony In Black” (please click to enlarge).