Once standing as symbols of prosperity within the luxurious interiors of grand European villas, these broken pianos have played their last tunes, now rotting among ruins. Photographer Romain Thiery traveled throughout France, Belgium, Italy, Germany and Poland to find abandoned mansions and other buildings where a forgotten piano might still stand, looking forlorn and forgotten in their crumbling settings.

“As a pianist myself, emotion takes over when I discover a neglected piano,” says Thiery. “This is the culmination of my art: my two passions are then united in one and the same feeling.”

Each of the abandoned places captured by Thiery for the ‘Requiem for Pianos’ series is in a slightly different stage of decay; some are only just beginning to show the ravages of time, the spaces looking almost like they’re still occupied, while others are speckled with black mold, the floors awash in fiberglass insulation, brick walls half-fallen.

The state of each subject, meanwhile, is sometimes slightly out of step with its surroundings, as if reflecting the individual piano’s personality and will to survive. Some are nearly destroyed in rooms that are just a little neglected, while others seem more persistent, as if they could still be convinced to revive for the right player.

The series is also notable for the heartbreaking beauty of the villas themselves, with all of their hand-crafted details, beautifully shaped glass windows, herringbone wood floors, scrolling wrought iron banisters and even portraits still hanging on the walls. Sometimes they give you a sense of who might have lived there, and what they might have been like, but many are too far gone for that. It feels like such a waste, and makes you wonder what happened to the structures and the former players of all those pianos.

Nude human bodies seem to melt into their surroundings, expertly hand-painted to match their environments in an artistic form of urban camouflage. Artist Trina Merry dodges traffic, police, pedestrians and inclement weather to capture photographs of her subjects against such backdrops as the Florence skyline, the Washington Monument, the Brooklyn Bridge and Westminster Abbey.

Typically working guerrilla-style without the permission of authorities in most cases, Merry selects locations that can make a big visual impact and then paints her models in place. Getting all those angles right is no small challenge – the human body is three-dimensional, after all, and nobody can stand perfectly still for very long. But somehow, it all comes together in the final images of Merry’s work.

For her latest series, ‘Sweet Land of Liberty,’ Merry poses subjects in front of iconic patriotic landmarks like the White House and the Lincoln Memorial, asking her audience to think about what we have to be grateful for. Previous projects have been set in cities around the world, along with natural cliffs and meadows of Ireland and studio shoots. Many scenes are made even more complicated by the use of several models, contorted to create specific shapes. Some incorporate larger objects, like entire cars, as in a commission for Ford.

“Body paint is an ancient art form and the use of ochre on the skin dates back 425,000 years and has a deeper part in all of our cultures than people tend to realize,” says Merry. “Painting on the body is a distinctly human experience; it creates a special connection to a person that other visual art forms have trouble accomplishing. This work has a heartbeat and a breath – it is dynamically alive. The ephemeral nature of body paint forces focus and reflects on the reality of existence, which is an incredible thought that I find myself reflecting on frequently while working.”

Lumps of modeling clay in shades that match human flesh are globbed into the hollows of what should be faces in this series of portraits mixing photography with sculpture. Artist José Cardoso gets under the viewer’s skin with visuals that disturb and fascinate, perhaps prompting some to reach up and ensure that their own faces are still intact after checking out the entire collection.

Warped and distorted, with ragged edges, holes from poking fingers and glimpses of bone-like foreign objects embedded within, the Play-Doh takes the place of ordinary features, completely obscuring them or making it seem as if some careless child’s hand has ripped them away. There’s no hint of an attempt at modeling an actual representation of a face – just lumps. (The ones with bits of hair and dirt in the dough are especially cringe-worthy.)

The series is deliberately reminiscent of the special effects in old school horror movies, especially those of David Cronenberg, and it’s easy to see that influence here. As scary as they may have been at the time, when we look back at films like Naked Lunch, The Fly, Videodrome and Shivers we can see that they clearly made use of a whole lo to rubber and clay to achieve those gory effects. In comparison, Cardoso’s work is quite restrained, but its subtlety is startlingly effective.

Skiers land jumps on ice cream cones, construction equipment struggles to transport oversized hot dogs and jet-powered seagulls zoom through the sky in a series of surreal photographic collages by Stephen McMennamy. Creative director of the advertising agency BBDO, McMennamy takes original photos of everything from meatballs to hand grenades and puts them together in unexpected ways, calling the results ‘combophotos.’

Inspired by the plethora of talent and creativity that can be found on Instagram, the photographer set out to pair things you’d never imagine together. Rather than seamlessly blending the photos in Photoshop so they appear to be a single composition, McMennamy simply matches up the contours of each subject, leaving behind the demarcation lines.

This technique results in images that tell an entirely different story than each of the originals, turning what would be highly ordinary, stock-photo-type images into something else altogether. McMennamy’s curiosity was initially piqued by photo apps that let you layer photos into collage compositions, and then he tried connecting images for a more fluid effect.

“The whole thing is one big scavenger hunt,” says the artist. “Sometimes it’s as simple as playing with scale and other times there’s a more meaningful message being told, like the cigarettes and French fries image but for the most part it’s just visual fun, like a truck with skateboard wheels.”

In Alabama, it is illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your back pocket. But New York-based photographer Olivia Locher is a rule-breaker, and she’s got the photo series to prove it. In ‘I Fought the Law,’ Locher visually documents dozens of ridiculous laws from around the country, including some real head-scratchers that make you wonder how they ever got on the books in the first place (and a few that some readers have written in to suggest may not really exist, at least not anymore).

In Utah, you’d better not walk down the street carrying a violin in a paper bag, and in California, riding a bicycle in a swimming pool is strictly prohibited. Pickles must bounce to be legally considered pickles in Connecticut, and in Hawaii, you can’t walk around with coins in your ears.

Kansas makes it illegal to serve wine in teacups, while Wisconsin won’t let you serve apple pie in public restaurants without cheese. In Oregon, you’re not allowed to test your physical endurance while driving a car on the highway. If you want to sell logs in Tennessee, they better not be hollow.

Some may be apocryphal or already removed, the photos highlight just how absurd and outdated these laws (past, present or perhaps urban legend) really are, whether or not they were really designed to prevent the things shown in this photographic set or are even enforced anymore. See the whole series (including some that are NSFW) at Olivia Locher’s website and tumblr.