In the mid 1950s Diane Arbus was spurred on by her mentor Lisette Model—the Austrian photographer based in New York—to abandon her 35mm camera for a medium format camera. Both photographers shared a strong attraction to environments and characters that were at the margins of society. Model was fascinated by old age and misery, while Arbus focused on everything that was outside of the norm. Model gave her protégé two pieces of advice: Arbus should photograph what she was passionate about, and should not press the shutter release until she felt fear, recommendations that Arbus was able to make her own. Diane Arbus also felt indebted to the photographer Weegee, whose use of fill flash she incorporated into her work.

The anthropological repertoire created by Arbus was specifically centered on the city of New York. The image of this young man in Washington Square exemplifies the way in which she required the complicity of the people she intended to photograph. Arbus’ gaze had the ability of turning the mundane into something exotic, forcing the spectator to look at reality in a new way. The singular style she incorporated into her portraits generated controversy in the art world, with detractors as relevant as Susan Sontag who considered that Diane Arbus lacked an honest point of view.