Team China performs during the team free routine artistic swimming competition at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, Sunday, October 8, 2023. (Photo by Aaron Favila/AP Photo)

This photo taken on October 30, 2022 shows people in costumes walking on the street during a celebration ahead of Halloween in Guangzhou in China's southern Guangdong province. (Photo by AFP Photo/China Stringer Network)

A man wearing a costume dives into a partly frozen lake in Shenyang, in China's northeastern Liaoning province on February 19, 2019. (Photo by AFP Photo/China Stringer Network)

Young girls practice acrobatic skills in the Sichuan Provincial Art School July 14, 2008 in Chengdu of Sichuan Province, China. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

Rebelling against political propaganda, acclaimed photographer Antanas Sutkus embarked on a life-long journey to capture the everyday scenes around him. Antanas Sutkus, born in 1939, studied journalism at Vilnius University in the late 1950s before becoming disillusioned by the confines of the Soviet-controlled press. He began taking photographs instead, and soon co-founded the Lithuanian Association of Art Photographers. Here: The first Lithuanian bikers, 1974. (Photo by Antanas Sutkus)

“Natacha Pisarenko was born in Buenos Aires and studied photography at that city’s School of Photographic Arts. Pisarenko currently works out of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She started her career in 1988 as a photographer for La Nación, one of Argentina’s largest newspapers, then joined the AP in Buenos Aires in 2002”. – Associated Press. Photo: A fan wearing leggings marked with the stripes of Great Britain's flag rests on the grass at the rowing venue in Eton Dorney, near Windsor, England, at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Monday, July 30, 2012. (Photo by Natacha Pisarenko/AP Photo)

Kevin Russ, a photographer & image moderator for iStockphoto, grew up in Arroyo Grande, California. In 2003, he made the move to Portland, planning to study at Multnomah Bible College. Finding the workload to be minimal, Kevin invested in a camera, filling his free time and finding himself instantly smitten with the craft. A year and a half later, photography had evolved into his full-time job. However, after 4 years of consistent portrait work, Kevin became burnt out and took a step back from photography altogether. Two years later, he picked up the camera again and now spends the majority of his time on the road, exploring & photographing the rustic landscapes & wildlife he encounters.

At this year’s Venice Bienniale in Italy, the Korean pavilion has a curious exhibit called “Commissions for Utopia”. It includes renderings from North Korea’s top architects and artists (all anonymous), many of whom studied at the Paekho Institute of Architecture, North Korea’s state-run architectural college, and none of whom have ever left the country. They were asked to create a vision of North Korea’s future sustainable architecture for its expanding tourism industry. Their final products are a glimpse into what it would be like to envision the future after being entirely cut off from the present for almost 70 years. (Photo by Nick Bonner/Kyle Vanhemert/Venice Architecture Biennale)