Dressed in garments from centuries long past, figures from classical paintings peer out the windows of metro cars, vend souvenirs, browse comics and otherwise interact with unlikely scenes in modern-day Naples, Italy. Artist Alexey Kondakov is back with another round of ‘Art History in Contemporary Life,’ his mash-up series that gives the world a new perspective on paintings from the distant past.

The Ukrainian artist is known for relocating angels, royals, knights, the Virgin Mary and other subjects from classical works by artists like Hans Holbein and William Bouguereau into modern-day scenes with careful attention to light and shadow for a convincing result.

Though the subjects remain painterly and the backdrops are crisp photographs of everyday city environments, the blended images read less like Photoshopped collages and more like finished works ready to be hung on museum walls.

Given this new context, the figures suddenly seem more real than they ever did before, as if we really could come across them playing harps in subway stations or hanging out in grungy bars.

Naples is a fitting choice for the latest series, simultaneously giving a nod to Italy’s history as birthplace of High Renaissance Art and illustrating how much the city has changed over the past 500 years. Previous iterations of ‘Art History in Contemporary Life’ were set in the artist’s hometown of Kiev, Ukraine. Check out more images from the Napoli Project at Kondakov’s website or Facebook.

Can you distill the architecture of a particular city down to an image of just a single building? Not effectively – unless you’re Sweden-based artist Anastasia Savinova, who scouts and photographs the most distinctive typologies of specific locations and then blends them into a single structure via paper collage. Entitled “Genuis Loci,” the series consists of monstrous, Frankenstein-like cobbled buildings packing in as much visual information as possible.

“Traveling around cities and countries, I take pictures of buildings, look into windows sneakily, go to local shops, flea markets and bars, watch everyday life – all this helps to build the feeling of the Place. This feeling becomes a foundation for a series of large-scale collages. The Integral Image emerges from visual information and a dozen of associations. While architecture and landscape are visual components of the integral image of the Place, at the same time, this image is inseparably linked with a mentality and a way of life.”

“It is saturated with ‘an incorporeal something.’ Ancient Romans called it ‘genus loci’ – the protective spirit of a place. In contemporary usage, ‘genus loci’ refers to a location’s distinctive atmosphere. A big house on each collage is composed of many buildings, which are typical for a particular country or city, in their connection with the land and the spirit of the place.”

Some almost look like they could be real structures, while the rest are pure fantasy, towering dozens or hundreds of feet into the air, sprouting forests from their roofs or balancing precariously on ladders. Can you guess from the images which countries are represented here? If you can’t figure it out, check out Savinova’s website for all the specifics.

Diverse artistic disciplines from graphic design to architecture come together, crossing boundaries and merging eras, to bring the likes of Marina Abramovic and Marcel Duchamp together in this series of digital compositions. Italian architecture student Davide Trabucco diagonally bisects square-shaped sections of classic paintings, film stills, ad campaigns and photos of buildings and installations, putting them together in unexpected ways.

The series, entitled Confórmi, has artists, designers and architects stepping into each other’s work, juxtaposing mediums and genres that you’d never imagine seeing in one image. These seemingly disparate masterpieces seamlessly meld together, revealing the basic elements of design that they all have in common, like composition, color, lines, tones and textures.

The Nike swoosh (designed by Carolyn Davidson in 1971) merges into the rooftop terrace of Curzio Malaparte in Italy. Architect Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe steps in for the bartender in Manet’s famous 1882 painting of the Folies-Bergéres. Darth Vader’s light saber becomes an illuminated gallery installation by Dan Flavin.

Says the artist (translated from Italian), “I created this ‘archive’ to manage my ‘heritage’ of knowledge and references in art and architecture. The new images, then are born like this: at the very moment in which a painting, a facade, a sculpture I remember another. The subtitle of the work then, the forms belong to no one, aims to highlight that the artist and his products are independent… most forms are often already present in nature, and only need us to process them and give them new meaning.”

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.”

Murdered gangsters, car crashes and four-alarm fires are nearly forgotten in the peaceful present day, but this photo series reminds us that the past is not so far away. Photographer Marc A. Hermann, a historian with the New York Press Photographers Association, lays old New York City crime scene photos on top of their present-day locations for dramatic juxtapositions of time period and mood.

Warning: these are real crime scene photos, and aren’t for the faint of heart. The very recently deceased are seen cradled in the arms of their loved ones, or sprawled out on the floor. The top photo depicts a distraught woman who climbed onto the ledge of her building; the second shows the Church of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary aflame.

The demise of gangsters Salvatore ‘Sammy’ Santoro and Frankie Yale can be seen after a shooting and a car crash, respectively. A woman hides her face in mourning of her sister in front of the ruins of a car. Firefighters battle a blaze at the Elkins Paper & Twine Co. that claimed the lives of six people.

In each photograph, the black-and-white historical image contrasts sharply with the modernized full-color setting. Tourists stroll past the scenes of some of the city’s most tragic disasters, completely unaware. The message seems to be that life goes on, but the ghostly imprints of those incidents remain. See the full series at New York Daily News.