A livestock vendor gives bath to a bull at a cattle market ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, on the outskirts of Karachi on June 10, 2024. (Photo by Asif Hassan/AFP Photo)

A girl dismantles a Kalashnikov rifle during a training lesson focused on the “Defence of Ukraine” at the military-patriotic center for schoolchildren in Lviv on May 17, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP Photo)

A woman lays dead outside the Redemption Hospital on Saturday September 20, 2014 in Monrovia, Liberia. Ebola patients come to the hospital, which has become a transfer and holding center to intake Ebola patients, but there is no space and some die while waiting outside. Redemption is located in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Monrovia that locals call "New Kru Town”. Health workers are overwhelmed with a constant stream of new patients since the Ebola outbreak. (Photo by Michel du Cille/The Washington Post)

Ornamental chicken breeding clubs have emerged in Indonesia, Thailand, North America and even European countries such as the UK and France. Malaysia is however the epicenter of this cultural phenomenon. These chickens are prized for their build, size, behavior and showmanship by their owners and competitions or beauty contests as they are often described are held almost every week in at least one village in Malaysia. Judges sit around a square table inspecting each chicken for a few minutes trying to determine a champion specimen in its own weight class based on its stance, temperament and physical assets like wings, tails and comb. The walk or strut by an ornamental chicken in a beauty contest, much like a runway model, constitutes a large part of the scoring system. (Photo by Ernest Goh/2013 Sony World Photography Awards)

“What did I know about Chechnya before last week? For someone who grew up in the 1990s the very word Chechnya meant a string of grainy images on TV showing people in battered camouflage outfits, shooting at each other amid destruction and ruin. Fear, wahhabis, Shamil Basayev, terrorism, mountains: these were the words that used to spring to my mind when someone mentioned Chechnya”. – Maxim Shemetov. Photo: Special forces officers stand guard during a government-organised event marking Chechen language day in the centre of the Chechen capital Grozny April 25, 2013. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

Photographer Howard Schatz had an idea: place actors in a series of roles and dramatic situations to reveal the essence of their characters. Such was the premise behind his book, In Character: Actors Acting, which captures some of Hollywood’s most emotive stars in the act of, well, making faces. Luckily for us, he continued the tradition for Vanity Fair. Here are some of the best.

Women Wrestlers, Bolivia. Lucha libre (Bolivian wrestling) is one of the most popular sports in the country. Women wrestlers are known as cholitas and have in the last ten years become popular in the sport. Here, Carmen Rosa and Yulia la Pacena perform in a benefit show to raise money for the bathrooms of a school in La Paz, Bolivia, 26 June 2011. (Photo by Daniele Tamagni)

Kale grows at Kajodlingen farm in Gothenburg, Sweden, September 28, 2016. They are doing it on the rooftops, on tower block balconies and even on a disused railway: Swedes have discovered a passion for urban gardening as a way of growing fresh food and getting back in touch with nature. Part of a global movement, an increasing number of Swedish city-dwellers are growing their own in window boxes and allotments or are visiting public gardens built in or on industrial or office spaces. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)