In the early 1960s in the United States, the Civil Rights Movement was gaining strength. A year after this photograph was made Martin Luther King made his famous “I have a dream” speech and in 1964 an act prohibited discrimination based on race and colour, and marked the beginning of the end of segregation. But for these three African-American boys – who stand and confront the camera with the swagger and confidence of adults – the colour of their skin would still have often made them outsiders in society, like many of Arbus’s other subjects. This picture was in the portfolio that Arbus submitted for her application for a Guggenheim grant – part of a project entitled ‘Portraits in Central Park’. In 1965, Arbus took up the project again, but moved to Washington Square Park which had a community that interested her, made up of “hippie junkies, lesbians, winos and girls from the Bronx”.