An iconic image that embodies the awkward tension between childhood tomfoolery and primal violence, this has become one of the most celebrated photographs in the history of the medium. America's historic transition from the complacent isolationism of the 1950s to the sociopolitical turmoil that would emerge in the late 1960s and 1970s seems to seethe beneath the surface of this image, underscoring Arbus' prescience and intuitive understanding of her time.
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The Met's Department of Photographs houses a collection of more than 75,000 works spanning the history of photography from its invention in the 1830s to the present.