Photographer Lori Nix hand-crafted dioramas are fictional scenes of a post-apocalyptic world in which plants and decay reclaim both grand and mundane structures. Each structure is built in Nix's living room and can take over half a year to build. Photo: Library, 2007. Photographer Lori Nix says this is the most popular image she has made for this project that she calls “The City”. (Photo by Lori Nix)

Many of the 12 million people who entered the US through New York’s Ellis Island wore traditional dress from their homelands. Here: A Ruthenian woman circa 1906 from the region historically inhabiting the kingdom of the Rus, incorporating parts of modern-day Slavic speaking countries. Her outfit consists of a shirt and underskirt made from linen embroidered with traditional floral-based patterns. (Photo by Augustus Francis Sherman/New York Public Library/The Guardian)

Japanese embroidery artist Hiroko Kubota was in the process of making custom sized clothes for her smaller-framed son when he made a small request: could some of the shirts have cats on them? Kubota explains her son was somewhat obsessed with cats and had collected a small library of adorable images found around the web.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Edward S. Curtis set out to document what he saw as a disappearing race: the Native American. From 1907 to 1930, Curtis took more than 2,000 photos of 80 tribes stretching from the Great Plains to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. He then published and sold these photos, along with narrative text, in 20 volumes of work known as “The North American Indian”. It is one of the most significant collections of its kind, “probably the most important photographic document of its age and its topic,” said Jeffrey Garrett, associate university librarian for Special Libraries at Northwestern University. (Photo by Edward S. Curtis)

A member of a winter swimming club wears flippers during the celebration of Maslenitsa, also known as Pancake Week, a pagan holiday, marking the end of the winter, in Novosibirsk, Russia. (Photo by Alexandr Kryazhev/Sputnik/Profimedia)

“I was born in Zimbabwe, Africa in 1981 and grew up in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I graduated with a degree in Acting, and after college, worked as an actor and musician for the Santa Fe Shakespeare Festival, the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, and the California Shakespeare Theater. I have had a lifelong passion for drawing, painting, and sculpture since I first saw Michelangelo's “Head of Leda” in a book in the library”.

Tourists view Hukou Waterfall on the Yellow River in the frigid winter on December 28, 2023 in Yan'an, Shaanxi Province of China. Freezing winter air has turned Hukou Waterfall into an icy wonderland. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Burning effigies of winter during a celebration of Maslenitsa festival (Pancake Week) at the Etnomir (Ethnoworld) cultural and educational center in Kaluga Region, Russia on March 1, 2020. The holiday celebrates the end of winter and marks the arrival of spring. (Photo by Sergei Bobylev/TASS)