This photograph is one of the earliest images of art in the Papuan Gulf. It was made by the Reverend William Lawes, who established the London Missionary Society's station at Port Moresby in 1874. Lawes had contact with Elema people who visited surrounding villages, and in the 1880s, he visited Maiva and its neighboring villages. However, this widely reproduced, emblematic image of three men displaying shields and a mask was taken not in Maiva but in Port Moresby, in a clearing near the mission station.

Lawes's images are autobiographical and document his personal interests as much as they do the art and people of the communities he visited. Thus, they establish a mode of representation, a visual style for how the art of the Papuan Gulf was pictured by outsiders, and a precedent for future "documentary" images of indigenous art. His photographs were distributed by Henry King's photography studio in Sydney. In a list King produced before 1894 offering Lawes's photographs, Young Men with Maiva Shields is number 73. It was probably taken before his mission colleague Robert Bruce left the Pacific to return to Scotland, having assembled a collection of 250 sculptures and ethnographic specimens (two of the shields pictured are now in the Glasgow Museum).