Kourtney Roy makes eerie self-portraits in desolate yet dramatic locations – with wigs and wardrobe straight out of 1950s melodrama. In these shots, from her “Enter as Fiction – California” series, she plays characters caught in desolate, often abandoned settings. (Photo by Kourtney Roy/Galerie Catherine et André Hug/The Guardian)

Minimiam is a project of the Japanese photographer Akiko Ida and French photographer Pierre Javelle. They met studying photography at the Paris “Arts Décoratifs” art school. The project has been ongoing since 2002 and was inspired by the married couple’s profession as commercial food photographers.

Catherine Nelson is a visual artist who uses the digital medium to paint images together into personal and imaginary landscapes. Trained as a painter in Sydney and London and with years of experience in the creation of visual effects for feature films like Moulin Rouge and Harry Potter, she now has dedicated her skills to her own art work combining the techniques from both these worlds into a new contemporary art medium. Her latest series have been exhibited in Australia, New Zealand, China, Korea, USA and Europe and have captivated audiences and art collectors in cities like Sydney, Paris, Los Angeles, Beijing and Seoul.

In Weronika Gęsicka’s unsettling images, American archive photography gets distorted into scenes that are both nightmarish yet somehow entirely plausible. Gęsicka is a guest artist at the Circulations festival for young European photographers, Paris, until 5 March. Here: “Untitled #5”. (Photo by Weronika Gęsicka/The Guardian)

Sebastião Salgado is a Brazilian documentary photographer living in Paris. He has produced several books, and his work has been exhibited extensively around the world. His latest work, «Genesis», premieres at The Natural History Museum in London on April 11, on view through September 8, 2013. Photo: On South Georgia, a barren island in the far South Atlantic, a pair of southern elephant seal calves beckon before a colony of king penguins. “The male seals can grow to almost five tons,” says Salgado, “but these are just babies. This one looked at me with beautiful eyes”. (Photo by Sebastião Salgado/Amazonas/Contact Press Images)

“Former Harry Potter star Emma Watson has shed her squeak-clean image by parading the streets in a bra and hot pants for her role in Sofia Coppola's latest movie. The actress has signed up for a leading role in The Bling Ring, playing one of the real-life teens who stole from the homes of stars including Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Orlando Bloom in 2008 and 2009. A series of images from the Los Angeles film set are set to shock the Brit's younger fans as she has been photographed strutting in tiny shorts, a bra-style top, leather jacket and towering high heels”. (Photo by PR Photos/Gaz Shirley/KVS/PacificCoastNews.com)