From stuffed elephants to picnics under power lines, Leipzig-born photographer Frank Herfort coaxes magical, colour-saturated tableaux from intriguing slices of everyday Russian life. Here: A lonely dog watches the mailboxes in a typical Moscow residential block. (Photo by by Frank Herfort/The Guardian)

A man carries an injured woman in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret al-Numan town in Idlib province, Syria January 9, 2016. At least 70 people died in what activists said where four vacuum bombs dropped by the Russian air force in the town of Maaret al-Numan; other air strikes where also carried out in the towns of Saraqib, Khan Sheikhoun and Maar Dabseh, in Idlib. (Photo by Khalil Ashawi/Reuters)

A traffic policeman hides a rose behind his back before giving it to a female driver ahead of International Women's Day in Ryazan, Russia on March 7, 2017. (Photo by Alexander Ryumin/TASS via Getty Images)

These photos and video were taken in the Russian city of Astrakhan on the evening of June 7th, 2012. (Photo by Maxim Korotshenko)

Admiral Flota Sovetskovo Soyuza Kuznetsov (Russian: Адмирал флота Советского Союза Кузнецов “Fleet Admiral of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov”), originally named Riga, renamed Leonid Brezhnev then Tbilisi) is an aircraft cruiser (heavy aircraft carrying missile cruiser (TAVKR) in Russian classification) serving as the flagship of the Russian Navy. She was originally commissioned in the Soviet Navy, and was intended to be the lead ship of her class, but the only other ship of her class, Varyag, was never commissioned and was sold to the People's Republic of China by Ukraine under the condition she would never be refitted for combat. Kuznetsov was named after the Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov.

Seals dressed in military uniforms swim during a show marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, at an aquatic park in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, Russia, May 9, 2015. (Photo by Evgeny Kozyrev/Reuters)

In this photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, the Russian tanker Renda powers toward Nome, Alaska with the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy's assistance January 6, 2012 in the Bering Sea. (Photo by Sara Francis/U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images)

In northwest Russia, in a small village called Alekhovshchina, Nadia Sablin's aunts spend the warmer months together in the family home and live as the family has always lived, chopping wood to heat the house and making their own clothes. Sablin's book of photographs, “Aunties: The Seven Summers of Alevtina and Ludmila”, is published by Duke University Press. Here: “Two-Handed Saw, 2014”. (Photo by Nadia Sablin)