Sofia Evangelia Malkogeorgou and Evangelia Platanioti of Greece perform in the duet technical routine of the artistic swimming event during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Aquatics Centre in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, on August 9, 2024. (Photo by Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

A child dressed in a Santa Claus costume reacts, on the day Palestinian Christians attend an Orthodox Christmas Mass at the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City on January 7, 2025. (Photo by Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters)

Mickey McCooper, born 1972 as Michel Valentino in Stuttgart-Germany, is a photo-artist, filmmaker, painter, and media-entrepreneur. He is well known for the broad range of subject matter he is able to interpret, he is widely recognized for his unusual people portraiture, his editorial photography, his photo illustrations, photographic design and his extraordinary repertoire of art photography, painings and drawings.

Photo: Space Invaders, 2011. (Photo by Mickey McCooper)

A believer dressed as a “diablo” (devil) jumps at the San Blas' (Saint Blaise) procession during the “Endiablada” festival in Almonacid del Marquesado, in central Spain February 3, 2015. In the “Endiablada”, an undated traditional festival in honour of the Candelaria Virgin and San Blas, believers are dressed in colourful costumes, wear a mitre with lead cowbells tied to their waists that ring as they wander around the village and in front of the saints' statues during their processions. (Photo by Susana Vera/Reuters)

A ship builder walks past a section of the Oasis Class 3 cruise ship at the STX Les Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyard site in Saint-Nazaire, western France, February 17, 2015. The Oasis-class III vessel is scheduled for delivery in mid-2016. (Photo by Stephane Mahe/Reuters)

A resident douses passengers riding in a public motorcycle cab with water, during St. John the Baptist Feast Day celebrations in San Juan city, metro Manila June 24, 2014. Residents participate in an annual city-wide waterfest in honour of their patron Saint John the Baptist. (Photo by Romeo Ranoco/Reuters)

In this March 18, 2015 photo, a boy rides a mechanical bull for children at the Texcoco Fair on the outskirts of Mexico City. In Mexico, these types of fairs date back to Spanish colonial times, and in some smaller communities they are organized around the feast days of Roman Catholic saints. (Photo by Eduardo Verdugo/AP Photo)

A swan is carried down the nave of the cathedral during the Procession of the Animals at the 31st annual Feast of Saint Francis and Blessing of the Animals at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in the Manhattan borough of New York on October 4, 2015. (Photo by Elizabeth Shafiroff/Reuters)