A Palestinian boy stands next to a damaged car following an Israeli raid in Tulkarm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on October 20, 2023. (Photo by Raneen Sawafta/Reuters)

Palestinians evacuate wounded people following an Israeli airstrike in Bureij refugee camp, Gaza Strip, Thursday, November 2, 2023. (Photo by Mohammed Dahman/AP Photo)

To produce the images that convey his fatalistic and ironic approach to life, tinged with hope, he needed the environment and knowledge of Mother Russia, oiled with a bit of bribery to certain circus trainers. Enter the Great Russian Bear, the personification of Russia for the last several centuries, onto center stage and into his studio. The bear is recognized as both brutish and cute – Misha was the mascot for the 1980 Olympic Games – and has remained a symbol of Russia since Tsarist times. In 2009 it is the symbol of the United Russia Party.

Wally Collins holds a bust of author Ernest Hemingway after winning the 2014 “Papa” Hemingway Look-Alike Contest in this handout photo provided by the Florida Keys News Bureau at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West, Florida July 19, 2014. Collins, a Phoenix resident, won the title on his sixth try during the event that was the highlight of Key West's annual Hemingway Days festival. (Photo by Andy Newman/Reuters/Florida Keys News Bureau)

Lightning strikes the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) in downtown on June 12, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

New York nightclub owner Jack L Hickman spends his free time marching around Times Square with a sign that reads “The only good communist is a dead communist”. (Photo by Peter Keegan/Keystone/Getty Images). 26th April 1965

An Iraqi man comforts his 4-year-old son at a regroupment center for POWs of the 101st Airborne Division near An Najaf, Iraq, March 31, 2003. The man was seized in An Najaf with his son and the U.S. military did not want to separate them. (Photo by Jean-Marc Bouju/Associated Press)

Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold of Norway in the finish during the women´s biathlon pursuit during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics at National Biathlon Centre on February 13, 2022 in Zhangjiakou, China. (Photo by Hannah Mckay/Reuters)