Moscow based photographer Katerina Plotnikova has been making a name for herself for her daring photos of young girls embracing wild beasts. (We first posted her work on our Facebook page.) Her haunting portraits are created with real, specially trained animals such as bears, owls, deer and foxes, blending surrealism with inspiration from fairytales. Perhaps our fascination with her images comes from a place we’ve almost forgotten, as deforestation and global warming become imminent threats to our planet. With each series, her work pushes the boundaries even further.
Like other photographers we’ve highlighted recently, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison and Elena Kalis, Plotnikova’s work celebrates our deep relationship with nature and how important it is to preserve it. One of her new photographs portrays a model lying injured on a road broken by tropical rains in Thailand. Her use of the environment is stunningly beautiful, but we are looking at the result of global climate change. In others, an ice sheet melts and crumbles around the model as she sleeps- later rising anew as a sapling from a burnt tree. Plotnikova’s imagery not only reminds us of our planet’s fragility but ignites a beacon of hope. Her surreal photos of a more blissful time may actually be a dream for the future.
It’s easy to get lost in the arresting vision of 
Spanish photographer AnaHell crafts disconcerting and absurd photos that play with the human form, using various parts of the body as the canvas to create cartoonish characters. The ongoing project Secret Friends mixes the surreal with a documentary-style approach to capturing spots across the world. Using conventions of travel photography, AnaHell sets out to subvert expectations by “quite literally bending reality and creating a new dimension in the midst of ordinary situations.”
With that signature, enormous red-gummed mouth, a piece by U.K. illustrator