The work belongs to Mariën's broader exploration of photography as a surrealist language. Instead of recording reality, the medium becomes a vehicle for irony, symbolism and psychological tension, where seemingly straightforward imagery acquires unexpected meanings.

Marcel Mariën (1920–1993) left school at fifteen to apprentice with a photographer, and in 1937 sought out René Magritte, quickly becoming one of the most prolific and irreverent members of the Belgian surrealist circle. Though he set photography aside for years in favour of writing and publishing — founding the review Les Lèvres Nues in 1954 — he returned to the medium in 1983, producing some of his most striking images in the decade before his death in Brussels in 1993.