Arbus was interested in masks, both worn literally – as in her photographs of people celebrating Halloween in an institution for the handicapped or, as here, at a masked ball; or metaphorically – the poses that people make for the camera, or the ways people try to create new identities by covering their skin with tattoos, cross-dressing, or performing onstage. Arbus photographed two society balls in 1967. The masked man pictured here would presumably have had money and status, yet his expression reveals no joy, and glimpsed through the mask his eyes seem blank and expressionless. Arbus’s decision to photograph this wealthy man as distant and remote may relate to her own feelings about her upbringing: “One of the things I felt I suffered from … was I never felt adversity. I was confirmed in a sense of unreality which I could only feel as unreality”.