Young Swiss photographer Cyril Porchet’s final year show included this awesome series of the most opulent Baroque church altars he could find in Spain, Austria and Germany. His intention was to explore the seductive power of display. What is extraordinary is how much you lose all sense of perspective and depth, such is the overabundance of detail. I like how the odd feature confuses all the more; like the red rope of the ornamental light in the image below for instance which neatly splices the image in half. I could pore over these for hours and hours.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Edward S. Curtis set out to document what he saw as a disappearing race: the Native American. From 1907 to 1930, Curtis took more than 2,000 photos of 80 tribes stretching from the Great Plains to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. He then published and sold these photos, along with narrative text, in 20 volumes of work known as “The North American Indian”. It is one of the most significant collections of its kind, “probably the most important photographic document of its age and its topic,” said Jeffrey Garrett, associate university librarian for Special Libraries at Northwestern University. (Photo by Edward S. Curtis)

Creators of Mini Cooper continue on with their innovative way of promoting their product. First, it was the huge cardboard boxes, which looked like packaging for full sized Mini Coopers, left all over Amsterdam. Now they’ve hired a famous artist Alexa Meade, who is known for making 3-D objects look as if they are 2-D paintings. For this project, Alexa had to fly to Japan, where she turned a whole Mini Cooper into a “drawing”. Even if you know that what you’re seeing on the picture are 3-D objects, your brain refuses to accept this, making you think that Alexa is standing near a sloppy picture of a Mini Cooper.

If you were to meet this guy in the woods, especially if it’s nighttime, you’d probably think that it’s a local troll or a yeti. However, in reality, he’s no yeti. His name is Mick Dodge, and before deciding to live in the woods, he was a marine for six years at Fort Lewis. It is hard to tell what moved him to leave the busy life of the city and start living in the Hoh Rain Forest. It could have been that he decided the leave the stressful life of the city, or maybe he simply loves the solitary life of a hermit. Another thing that is peculiar about Mick Dodge is that most of the time he walks barefoot, hence the nickname “The Barefoot Sensei”.

A mushroom cloud dwarfs a row of skyscrapers in what looks like a devastating nuclear bomb detonation. But thankfully this is just a spectacular weather-front blasting in from the tempestuous Rocky Mountains near Denver, Colorado, USA. The unbelievable shot is just one of many of the city's skyline taken by photographer Greg Thow. The 49-year-old has also captured equally stunning shots of lightning blasts and arching rainbows – all from the comfort of his balcony. (Photo by Greg Thow/Barcroft Media)

Teeming with images of spectacular underwater scenes from around the world, Call of the Blue is the culmination of a five-year project by the photographer and ocean conservationist Philip Hamilton. This groundbreaking book includes contributions from acclaimed scientists and ocean “guardians”, who reveal what drove them to answer the call of the blue. (Photo by Philip Hamilton/The Guardian)

A tear rolls down the cheek of Karima el-Mahroug, also known as Ruby, a Moroccan woman at the center of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi's s*x-for-hire trial, as she reads a statement to reporters during a protest outside the court house, in Milan, Italy, Thursday, April 4, 2013. The Moroccan woman at the center of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi's s*x-for-hire trial has denounced what she says is psychological warfare being waged against her by Italian prosecutors. Ruby, read out a lengthy statement Thursday to a gaggle of reporters in front of Milan's courthouse denying she was a prostitute and insisting that prosecutors hear her side of the story. (Photo by Luca Bruno/AP Photo)

In this Tuesday, September 12, 2017 photo, Amornrat Simapsaisan, a local shop manager, watches before she ate watermelon salad with bamboo worms, at Inspects in the Backyard restaurant, Bangkok, Thailand. Tucking into insects is nothing new in Thailand, where street vendors pushing carts of fried crickets and buttery silkworms have long fed locals and adventurous tourists alike. But bugs are now fine-dining at the Bangkok bistro aiming to revolutionize views of nature’s least-loved creatures and what you can do with them. She tucked in quite happily to her watermelon and cricket salad on a recent evening. “It’s tasty. It’s munchy”, she said. (Photo by Sakchai Lalit/AP Photo)