A model takes a picture of photographers outside the Anna Sui show at the Strand Rare Book Room in New York on February 10, 2024. (Photo by Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post)

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.

Cork twins Sibéal and Éimhin Walsh celebrate with their friends, Samuel Palliser Kehoe and Charlotte Herlihy, during the Feis Ceoil Festival in Ireland on March 20, 2023. (Photo by Clare Keogh/The Irish Times)

In this Tuesday January 21, 2014, file photo, slaughtered chickens are displayed for sale at a wholesale poultry market in Shanghai. The Chinese government on Tuesday, June 1, 2021, says a 41-year-old man has contracted what might be the w0orld’s first human case of the H10N3 strain of bird flu, but the risk of large-scale spread is low. (Photo by AP Photo/File)

West Ham United's Mark Noble and Bournemouth's Dominic Solanke take a tumble during a match at London Stadium in London, Britain on January 1, 2020. (Photo by Eddie Keogh/Reuters)

A lizard is seen hunting for fish during the daytime on May 04, 2017 in West Sumatra, Indonesia. (Photo by Riau Images/Barcroft Images)

A man wearing a costume of the StarWars protagonist Din Djarin poses in front of a giant replica of the Razor Crest, a gunship from the StarWars spinoff series “The Mandalorian” used by the hit TV show's mysterious bounty hunter to roam the galaxy's outer reaches, in a park of the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk on March 14, 2021. (Photo by Evgeniy Sofroneyev/AFP Photo)

Denmark's forward #10 Pernille Harder celebrates scoring her team's first goal during the Australia and New Zealand 2023 Women's World Cup Group D football match between Haiti and Denmark at Perth Rectangular Stadium in Perth on August 1, 2023. (Photo by Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters)