When Abbott photographed him in 1926, James Joyce (1882–1941) was one of the most important writers in Paris and the star of the expatriate literary circle that frequented Sylvia Beach's bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. Beach had published Joyce's revolutionary novel Ulysses in 1922 and was doubtless responsible for arranging this session with the young American photographer. Although Abbott had taken up the camera only the previous year, while working as a darkroom assistant to Man Ray, like him she was rapidly becoming a favorite photographer of the avant-garde set in Paris.

At the time of this sitting Joyce was engaged in his most ambitious undertaking, Finnegans Wake, and was suffering both from early criticism that it was unreadable and from a painful eye condition that required him to wear an eye patch and kept him home at 2 square Robiac (where this photograph was made). More like a mirror's reflection than a professional portrayal, Abbott's perceptive portrait seems to peer deep into her subject's psyche, revealing the complex and sympathetic character that writer Djuna Barnes so aptly described as "the Grand Inquisitor come to judge himself."