A wounded Palestinian boy reacts at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on May 1, 2024. (Photo by Hatem Khaled/Reuters)

Jacob Yighe, right, attends the Met Gala Party for Jean Paul Gaultier x Shayne Oliver Group held at Sapphire in Manhattan on May 6, 2024. (Photo by Jeenah Moon for The Washington Post)

Women atop a boat take a group photo as the U.S. Navy’s Flight Demonstration Squadron’s Blue Angels perform in the skies over Annapolis, Maryland, on May 22, 2024. (Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

A Ukrainian serviceman stands on a flag of Russia's mercenary group Wagner near the Russian border in Sumy region, Ukraine on August 13, 2024. (Photo by Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters)

A jaguar eyes up a group of otters from a riverbank in Porto Jofre, North Pantanal, Brazil early November 2024. (Photo by Octavio Campos Salles/Solent News)

With temperatures soaring and summer well underway, countless Americans will be spending their Independence Day weekend at the beach. Here we revisit some classic images from the turn-of-the-century to the 1930's of vacations by the sea, from Coney Island to Santa Monica.

Artist Amber Wheeler of Minneapolis, Minn., has given her 2-month-old boy just that. All she used was some Photoshop and well-timed photos. Using simple black lines – much like the ones in this series of cat Instagram portraits – Wheeler transformed her son into an astronaut, a superhero, and a cowboy without spending one dollar on costumes.

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.