Since 1950, a new generation of photographers known as the Nueva Vanguardia (new avantgarde), which Joan Colom was part of, renewed the language of Spanish photography. This image belongs to a series of photographs taken by the artist in the streets of Barcelona—in what is now known as the Raval—between 1958 and 1961, which conformed an exhibition titled La Calle (The Street), hosted at Sala Aixelà, also in 1961.

As Colom himself noted: “I didn’t know that I was making social photography at the time. I just did photography and searched for images that moved me. Sometimes I have used that term to define my work, but perhaps for me it simply means that I do not portray landscapes or still lives. I do the street”.