No American photographer examined the breadth of photography and its various applications as Steichen did. His nearly eight-decade involvement and devotion to the medium saw him in various roles, establishing a adaptable approach to photographing and a deep understanding of the medium's versatility.

The 1920s defined Steichen as a commercial photographer — a direct result of World War I, during which he was appointed chief of the Photographic Section of the American Expeditionary Forces. This marked a shift away from the pictorial, soft-focus photographs for which he was then renowned, towards realist, informational photographs produced for reconnaissance purposes. He later reflected: "The wartime problem of making sharp, clear pictures from a vibrating, speeding airplane ten to twenty thousand feet in the air had brought me a new kind of technical interest in photography… Now I wanted to know all that could be expected from photography." This new way of looking influenced his advertising photographs, and led to a position as chief photographer at Condé Nast. During this period he was also commissioned by Vogue, Vanity Fair, and the advertising agencies of Madison Avenue, among them J. Walter Thompson, the original client for this work, later published in Harper's Bazaar in 1928.

Clean lines, metallic tonality, and precise delineations of form situate the photograph at the intersection of the Machine Age and Art Deco movements, which defined American art throughout the 1920s. Created a year before Jane Heap’s eminent Machine Age Exposition of 1927—and published just two months after crews broke ground on the new Chrysler Building, the very same year Charles Demuth painted I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold—Steichen's photograph, radiant in its modernity, elevates the advertisement to fine art and deploys contemporary aesthetics as a primary selling device.

Originally from the collection of Joanna Steichen.

The photograph is accompanied by the original paper mount, to which it was once tipped.