In this Friday, March 28, 2014 photo, singers of the Moranbong Band, Jong Su Hyang, foreground, and Pak Mi Kyong, left perform on their stage in Pyongyang, North Korea. Step aside, Sea of Blood Opera. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's favorite guitar-slinging, miniskirt-sporting girl group, the Moranbong Band, is back. And these ladies know how to shimmy. (Photo by Jon Chol Jin/AP Photo)

This 1999 photo, supplied by HBO, shows a younger-looking James Gandolfini, who plays mob boss Tony Soprano, in an episode from the first season of the HBO cable television mob series, “The Sopranos”. Actor James Gandolfini, best known for his Emmy-winning portrayal of a conflicted New Jersey mob boss in the acclaimed HBO cable television series “The Sopranos”, has died while vacationing in Rome, the network said on June 19, 2013. (Photo by Anthony Neste/AP Photo/HBO)

Revellers take part in an annual block party known as “Cordao de Prata Preta”, one of the many carnival parties to take place in the neighbourhoods of Rio de Janeiro, February 6, 2016. (Photo by Pilar Olivares/Reuters)

Demonstrators perform a dance in front of riot policemen during a march called by students to request changes in the education system in Santiago, Chile September 5, 2017. (Photo by Ivan Alvarado/Reuters)

A Ka'apor Indian warrior (L) chases a logger who tried to escape after they captured him during a jungle expedition to search for and expel loggers from the Alto Turiacu Indian territory, near the Centro do Guilherme municipality in the northeast of Maranhao state in the Amazon basin, August 7, 2014. Tired of what they say is a lack of sufficient government assistance in keeping loggers off their land, the Ka'apor Indians, who along with four other tribes are the legal inhabitants and caretakers of the territory, have sent their warriors out to expel all loggers they find and set up monitoring camps in the areas that are being illegally exploited. (Photo by Lunae Parracho/Reuters)

A reveler and a child street vendor pose for a photo during the Banda de Ipanema Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, January 31, 2015. Rio's over-the-top Carnival is the highlight of the year for many local residents. Hundreds of thousands of merrymakers are beginning to take to the streets in open-air “blocos” parties. (Photo by Silvia Izquierdo/AP Photo)

Only the most intrepid urban explorers cross the tattered ruins of the old Iron Curtain to endure the excessive bureaucracy, military paranoia and freezing winds of the East to hunt for the ghosts of an empire. Rebecca Litchfield is one who couldn’t resist the haunting allure of the ruins of the Soviet Union.

Vanessa Silva, 38, feeds macaws that fly to her apartment window every day looking for food, in Caracas, Venezuela, on November 24, 2014. A group of gold-and-royal blue birds poked their heads through Silva’s window, as if saying “I’m here, is anyone home?” “I’d seen them flying when I was down on the street, and I thought ‘Oh how pretty,’” the 38-year-old said, a macaw eating out of her hand. (Photo by Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo)