Teenagers playing with mud started the Bloco da Lama in 1986 and it has since become an annual event in the city of Paraty, Brazil. Hundreds of people wrestle, coat each other in mud and throw it around to the sound of samba and reggaeton at a carnival beach party on February 18, 2023. Clothes are optional, but mud is not. (Photo by Fabio Teixeira/SIPA Press/Profimedia)

«Female Boxers», 2024. Julia Fullerton-Batten is a fine art photographer renowned for her cinematic visual storytelling. Her large-scale projects are based around specific themes, each image embellishing her subject matter in a series of thought-provoking “stories” using staged tableaux and sophisticated lighting techniques. (Photo by Julia Fullerton-Batten)

The exhibition “All the colors of Warhol” on July 8, 2024 was opened in the SALON Gallery, the Museum of the City of Belgrade, organized by the Museum of the City of Belgrade and the Belgrade Festival Center of CEBEF, and will last until the end of the month. (Photo by L.L./ATAImages)

Family Donation by Si Thu Ye Myint (Myanmar, Winner). Myin Twin village in upper Myanmar. (Photo by Si Thu Ye Myint/Sony World Photography)

In this June 1, 2016 photo, Maria Arias stands near her kitchen as she puts on earrings while getting ready for school in Caracas, Venezuela. So many students have fainted from hunger at Maria's school that administrators told parents to keep their children home until they could find more food. (Photo by Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo)

Ballerinas Kennedy George, 14, and Ava Holloway, 14, pose in front of a monument of Confederate general Robert E. Lee after Virginia Governor Ralph Northam ordered its removal after widespread civil unrest following the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Richmond, Virginia, U.S. June 5, 2020. (Photo by Julia Rendleman/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.

Children play in their grandmother's garden in a suburb of Budapest, Hungary, Thursday, July 21, 2022. Hungary has experienced several heat waves since mid June with day-time temperatures rising to 40 degrees Celsius and remaining at tropical levels through the night. In fact, the country recently shattered record for its hottest night ever when temperature of 25.4 C was measured in Budapest on July 26. (Photo by Anna Szilagyi/AP Photo)