A man bathes in an ice hole in the Neva River in St. Petersburg, Russia, Wednesday, January 13, 2021. The temperature in St. Petersburg is –15C ( 5 °F). (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

Maxime Taccardi is an artist who is most notable for his unusual method – creating his pieces using his own blood. He studied art in collage, his thesis focusing on the monstrosity and what is considered abnormal by society. Currently he is a middle school art teacher, but plans to continue furthering his creative career. His catalogue of work is varied, including painting, drawing, filmmaking and music.

First place, The Beauty of Plants. “There are many stages of lotus growth on display at the Aquatic Gardens, but to come across twotwisted dancing stems of nelumbo nucifera was unexpected and quite magical”. (Photo by Kathleen Furey/The Guardian)

Iraqi Kurdish female fighter Haseba Nauzad looks through a pair of binoculars during a deployment near the frontline of the fight against Islamic State militants in Nawaran near Mosul, Iraq, April 20, 2016. (Photo by Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters)

Penguins majestically march on sand before heading out for a morning swim. Wildlife photographer Wim van den Heever, 45, visited the Falkland Islands this year to shoot pictures and scout the area for future tours. Wim’s breathtaking images show a small group of king penguins before they head out to sea at sunrise. Here: King Penguins marching during sunrise, Falkland Islands. (Photo by Wim van den Heever/Caters News)

Artist Tsuneo Sanda was born in Osaka, Japan. He first came to Tokyo at age 23, and has been there ever since. He lives in a rural, residential town about 20km west of Tokyo with his wife, Sachicko, two sons, Kensaku and Sohei, and Vivian, their American Shorthair cat.

A Somali man carries a fish at Liido beach in Mogadishu, Somalia on December 29, 2023. (Photo by Feisal Omar/Reuters)

For France, the trauma of the Algerian War (1954-1962) was not unlike the experience of the Vietnam War for the United States. But, unlike the conflict in Vietnam, few photographic documents exist from that period in Algeria: it is as if the French responded with collective amnesia. Marc Garanger’s Algerian Women is one of the few photographic essays dedicated to that painful period... Photo: A 1960 photograph of an Algerian woman in a French regroupment village. (Photo by Marc Garanger)