Portrait category, bronze award winner. Purple-crested Turaco Gallirex porphyreolophus. Lower Mpushini, near Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. (Photo by Richard Flack/Bird Photographer of the Year 2022)
Italian pencil artist Marco Mazzoni‘s work goes far beyond technical perfection. His representation of historical healing women is enigmatic and sublime. Often leaving the eyes blank or covered with an abundance of birds, butterflies and flowers, he gives the impression of a deeper inward focused sight, as well as obscuring the identity of the individual. Many female healers in the past – both medicine woman and midwives – were brutally persecuted by religion, some even burnt as witches… Mazzoni’s work captures their deep connection with nature and their innate power and femininity with delicacy and beautiful detail.
Dajana Djuric, 25, who has worked as a chimney sweep since the age of six, cleans a chimney in Brcko, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dajana Djuric, believed to be the only female chimney sweep in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has to contend with perilous roofs in the depth of winter. (Photo by Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
A woman in a maid costume serves customers the Maid Coffee Shop in the Akihabara District October 23, 2005 in Tokyo, Japan. The Akihabara District is known as the world's biggest electrical appliance and equipment town, but recently this area has also became famous for having many shops delivering products and healing services by employees in the costume of maids and animation characters. Some popular shops include coffee, hair salon and massage shops where females deliver services dressed as maids. (Photo by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images)
Allyson Anne Lamb is a Brooklyn based fine artist primarily working in photography. Her work uses the body to explore the complexity of human emotions and the continuous invisible transformations we experience, revealing them as monstrosities or fantastical beings. Through the assembling of body parts, bright colors and fictional spaces that exist in Lamb's magical realm where sexual anxiety, female identity and altered sensorial perceptions are explored, Lamb invites us to participate in an altered state of consciousness. We step in to quaint fragmented realities where we are welcomed to engage in lucid dreaming populated by colorful mutations.
A man carries a figurine of Santa Muerte or The Saint of Death during the first prayer of the New Year in Mexico City, Mexico January 1, 2017. Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte is a female deity of Mexican folk religion, venerated primarily in Mexico and the Southwestern United States. (Photo by Carlos Jasso/Reuters)
Artist David Walker creates female portraits that are layered with color, motion, and emotion.He started painting three years ago and has built up a strong fanbase after decorating buildings all over the world, from his home in London to the streets of New York. He paints his beautiful portraits on walls, canvas, records, and other surfaces using spray paint only, and without ever using a brush.