After the dark periods of the Great Depression and World War II, the United States experienced an era of relative optimism and economic prosperity. In 1954, at a time when the magazine industry was thriving and counted on the work of photojournalists, Garry Winogrand was hired by the Henrietta Brackman Associates photo agency in New York. Through the agency he was able to receive commissions from leisure magazines such as Collier’s, Pageant, and Sports Illustrated. However, although he had a successful position as a photojournalist, in 1957 he decided to focus on more personal projects and embarked on several trips through the United States in order to photograph. He visited Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Ohio, Colorado, and the Southwest.

In 1957 he visited Nevada, California, and New Mexico. In Albuquerque (New Mexico), Winogrand made this photograph of powerful contrasts: on one hand there is the juxtaposition between black and white, and on the other, between the rigidness of the architecture and the organic shapes of nature. Emerging from the darkness of the garage appears a figure that is almost angelic: a blonde toddler dressed in white, probably Laurie, the photographer’s daughter who was born a year earlier. In compositions like this, one can appreciate how Winogrand took part in the North American social landscape genre that addressed the effects of human actions on the landscape.