Los Angeles native Mike Stilkey has always been attracted to painting and drawing not only on vintage paper, record covers and book pages, but on the books themselves. Using a mix of ink, colored pencil, paint and lacquer, Stilkey depicts a melancholic and at times a whimsical cast of characters inhabiting ambiguous spaces and narratives of fantasy and fairy tales. A lingering sense of loss and longing hints at emotional depth and draws the viewer into their introspective thrall with a mixture of capricious poetry, wit, and mystery. (Photo by Mike Stilkey)

A staff member feeds a rabbit at the Bunny Style Hotel in Hong Kong, Wednesday, January 18, 2023. With the lifting of COVID restrictions, Hong Kongers are traveling again and some of those who keep rabbits at pets are booking them into a rabbit resort where they are fed, exercised and pampered with spa treatments. The Lunar New Year of the Rabbit is shining a particular spotlight on the popularity of the animals in the crowded city of tiny apartments. (Photo by Anthony Kwan/AP Photo)

Invasion (laser girls) 2017. “I’m always thinking about my art practice, so any experience I have may spike a visual when I have an idea in mind. An example is that, when I was thinking about the Invasion series, I was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds (1963). I love Hitchcock’s other movies and have been contemplating a series based on Rear Window (1954). I also find inspiration outside the cinema in music clips and magazines”. (Photo by Michael Cook/Perimeter Books)

A student falls asleep as she holds a book containing a portrait of China's late chairman Mao Zedong during a lesson at the Democracy Elementary and Middle School in Sitong town, Henan province December 3, 2013. In a remote part of central China, the day starts at the Democracy Elementary and Middle School with a pre-dawn jog, some revolutionary songs and then an activity long since forgotten at other schools: reciting quotations from Mao Zedong's famed “Little Red Book”. While the ruling Communist Party that Mao led continues to hold him in esteem as the leader of the Communist Revolution, his radical policies and teachings have been largely shelved since his death in 1976 in favour of a pro-market approach that has turned China from a backwater into the world's second biggest economy. The 120th anniversary of Mao's birth is on December 26, 2013. (Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Born in Tokyo, Dusseldorf-based artist Ramon Todo creates beautiful textural juxtapositions using layers of glass in unexpected places. Starting with various stones, volcanic rock, fragments of the Berlin wall, and even books, the artist inserts perfectly cut glass fragments that seem to slice through the object resulting in segments of translucence where you would least expect it.

Denis Rouvre is a portraitist, living and working in France. His photos have been nationally and internationally published. Rouvre’s photo series have been widely exhibited in France and abroad. He has also published several books, and his numerous prizes include World Press Photo award, and a Sony World Photography Award. Photo: Asia Argento. (Photo by Denis Rouvre)

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.