When he arrived in Paris in February 1927, accompanying Marcel Duchamp, the former Harvard fine-arts student Julien Levy (1906–1981) was quickly introduced into a society of avant-garde artists and writers that included Gertrude Stein, Constantin Brancusi, James Joyce, and Man Ray. Berenice Abbott was Man Ray's assistant at the time, as well as an admirer of Eugène Atget, whose archive of photographs she would later acquire with Levy's assistance.

Abbott's portrait of Levy, which he kept for his private collection, commemorates his arrival in Paris and pays homage to his father-in-law, the Dada poet-boxer Arthur Cravan (1887–1918?), who shaved his head every summer. Levy's adoption of this unconventional look signals his assimilation into the avant-garde during a brief and exhilarating period of expressive freedom, artistic innovation, and utopian dreams. Although made before Levy had opened his first gallery in New York in 1931, Abbott's remarkable portrait seems uncannily to reveal him in the role he would shortly assume as America's most visionary champion of photography, experimental film, and Surrealist art.