“I want to photograph the considerable ceremonies of our present” was the opening line of Arbus’s application for a Guggenheim grant in 1963, for a project titled ‘American Rites, Manners and Customs’. She ended the proposal with the statement: “These are our symptoms and our monuments. I want simply to save them, for what is ceremonious and curious and commonplace will be legendary”. Given this intention, it is perhaps surprising that Arbus did not make more photographs of one of the most common ceremonies – weddings. Here a young flower girl dressed in white stares intensely at the camera, a striking figure in front of a misty backdrop. Arbus creates a mysterious image that seems unreal – an ordinary flower girl appears more like a character from a fairytale or a ghost story.