Participants pose for a photographers during the Miss Iraq Pageant in Baghdad, December 19, 2015. (Photo by Ahmed Saad/Reuters)

A performer practices her mermaid swim next to a shark in an aquarium after graduating from a mermaid workshop in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China December 16, 2016. (Photo by Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

UK-based photographer Thom Atkinson’s series Soldiers’ Inventories – an attempt to explore “the mythology surrounding Britain’s relationship with war”.

Tattoos always seem to fascinate us, which is probably one of the reasons why Dionne Marshall has turned to tattooing patterns onto leather. The designs she creates are reminiscent of tattoos favored by people in Central America. Working with leather is a lot harder than working with paints or pencils. Unlike the latter, there is no room for mistakes when you make a tattoo. This is the reason why there are so few artists that specialize in creating art by tattooing leather. However, the results are definitely worth it, as this is a truly unique form of art with a primal feeling to it. (Photo by Dionne Marshall)

“Snailpimp” is a project by artist Stefan Siverud, who is having fun decorating living snails with the most varied designs, from the McDonald’s logo to the miniature lighthouse through Pac-Man, Ikea and Adidas. A funny and interesting project, achieved with non-toxic paints, which of course raises the question of the impact on these living animals. If some people ironize that these highly visible snails are less likely to be inadvertently stepped on by people, others point out that they are more easily spotted by predators… A project in line with the Inner City Snail artist Slinkachu.

In an extraordinary act of devotion to his art, sculptural artist Spencer Byles spent a year creating beautiful sculptures out of natural and found materials throughout the unmanaged forests of La Colle Sur Loup (where he lived with his family), Villeneuve Loubet and Mougins. He worked together with elements of his natural surroundings to create artwork that blends seamlessly with the environment.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s misfortunes have often eclipsed its good news, with ongoing armed conflicts and most recently an Ebola outbreak. Much of the world knows little of the country’s vibrant arts scene, and last weekend in the capital, Kinshasa, models showed off daring new looks dreamed up by local designers on the catwalk. (Photo by Olivia Acland/The Guardian)

The secretive indri (Indri indri) of Madagascar, the largest living lemur. It is also critically endangered and highly evolutionarily distinct with no close relatives, which makes its branch one of most precarious on the mammal evolutionary tree. In the likely event that the indri goes extinct, we will lose 19m years of unique evolutionary history from the mammal tree of life. (Photo by Pierre-Yves Babelon/Aarhus University)