Members of the Sydney Swans Football Club and LA Rams cheerleaders walk in the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade as part of Sydney WorldPride on February 25, 2023 in Sydney, Australia. The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade returns to Oxford Street in celebration of the event's 45th anniversary. The parade began in 1978 as a march to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York and has been held every year since to promote awareness of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered issues. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

A protester reacts at an anti-riot police officer after being teargased as he takes part in a demonstration against a controversial tax bill in the central business district in Nairobi, Kenya, 20 June 2024. Police have fired tear gas to disperse protesters who gathered near the parliament to demonstrate against planned tax hikes that many fear will worsen the cost-of-living crisis. (Photo by Daniel Irungu/EPA)

A member of the Lebanese Army riot-control forces fires a shotgun as they try to disperse a Hezbollah-organised rally to block the road to Beirut International Airport over a decision to bar two Iranian flights from landing there, in Beirut on February 15, 2025. An AFP correspondent said tear gas was fired to disperse crowds on February 15 after again blocking amidst calls by the Iran-backed group for a sit-in. (Photo by Ibrahim Amro/AFP Photo)

Riot police face off with demonstrators at the “Occupy Denver” camp on October 29, 2011 in Denver, Colorado. Following a march by protesters, police moved in on their encampment to tear down recently erected tents. They arrested numerous protesters, pepper-sprayed others and others reportedly fired rubber bullets at the crowd during the confrontation. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

“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)

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.”

Tahiti, French Polynesia, June 5, 2016: Surfer Courtney Conlogue. ESPN The Magazine's The Body Issue set out seven years ago with one mission: to celebrate and explore the athletic form through powerful images and interviews. The cornerstone of each annual issue is The Bodies We Want photo portfolio, which features roughly 20 of the world's most elite athletes posing nude. (Photo by Steven Lippman for ESPN The Magazine Body Issue)

A French farmer leads her cow through the livestock area as preparations continue on the eve of the opening of the International Agricultural Show in Paris, France, February 26, 2016. The Paris Farm Show runs from February 27 to March 6, 2016. (Photo by Benoit Tessier/Reuters)