In this photograph of four socialites at a New York gallery opening, the figures – in particular the woman – look more like the waxworks in the Coney Island Wax Musée (a place that Arbus liked to visit) than human. Here Arbus finds humour in an ordinary event, satirising the glamorous lives of the upper classes, and also mocking her own privileged background as the daughter of the owner of a Fifth Avenue department store. The picture also recalls the news photographer Weegee’s sardonic photographs of the rich attending society events in New York in the 1940s and made to look ridiculous in their furs and jewels by his unforgiving flash. Arbus had discovered Weegee’s work herself in 1970 remarking “He was so good when he was good. Extraordinary!”