Hospitality staff members laugh as they stand on Tiananmen Square before the closing ceremony of China's 19th Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Tuesday, October 24, 2017. The ruling Communist Party on Tuesday formally lifted Xi Jinping's status to China's most powerful ruler in decades, setting the stage for the authoritarian leader to tighten his grip over the country while pursuing an increasingly muscular foreign policy and military expansion. (Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)

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)

Members of the Colombian Navy stand guard on top of a seized submarine built by drug smugglers in a makeshift shipyard in Timbiqui, department of Cauca February 14, 2011. Colombian authorities said the submersible craft was to be used to transport 8 tons of cocaine illegally into Mexico. (Photo by Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters)

Find out what 2014 has in store for you and your cash. Provided by Russell Grant Horoscopes. (Photo by Toma Petrovic)

A schoolgirl runs past a burning barricade in Kibera slum, Nairobi on May 23, 2016 during a demonstration of opposition supporters protesting for a change of leadership ahead of a vote due next years. (Photo by Carl De Souza/AFP Photo)

A giant Santa Claus, created and worn by local artist Ed Terrell, 66, walks home with his son and assistant, Rupanuga, 18, following a ceremony to decorate a scraggly Christmas tree with a single red Bulb in Reading, Pennsylvania, December 7, 2014. A ceremony to decorate the scraggly Christmas tree in Reading, Pennsylvania with a single red bulb, much like Charlie Brown's tree in the animated holiday classic, was postponed to Sunday from Saturday because of rain and cold temperatures, officials said. Officials decided to hold a re-dedication ceremony, which will include a Spanish and English reading from the movie's screenplay, and decorate it with a single red bulb, as in the 1965 animated television special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. (Photo by Mark Makela/Reuters)

A donkey savors warming temperatures after a long winter at the zoo in Warsaw, Poland, on Wednesday, April 8, 2015. (Photo by Czarek Sokolowski/AP Photo)

In this Thursday, April 13, 2017, picture entertainers wearing rabbit costumes speak at a fair in Bucharest, Romania. Ahead of Easter, celebrated by both Orthodox and Catholic believers on April 16 processions of priests clad in golden robes carrying foliage on Palm Sunday in a recreation of Jesus' ride into Jerusalem, mixed with more commercial flavored celebrations like an Easter fair outside the giant palace built by late Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu where entertainers strutted around wearing giant rabbit heads. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)