The first photographs made by Diane Arbus were taken with a 35mm camera and following an aesthetic similar to that of the reportages of the time, which were somewhat impersonal and marked by grainy images and powerful contrasts. Especially influenced by her mentor and teacher Lisette Model, who encouraged her to find her own range, Arbus progressively honed her gaze. In 1962 she began to create compositions in a more classical square format, searching for details, a greater clarity in her images, and a more direct relationship to the people being photographed; this would become one of the distinctive traits in her work.

Teenage Couple on Hudson Street s was taken in 1963, at a point when Arbus had managed to make the language of the Rolleiflex camera her own.  A teenage couple poses for the photographer on Hudson Street, in the midst of an impoverished neighborhood where many migrants had settled after the World War II. The teenager’s arm over his girlfriend’s shoulder and the seriousness of both subjects, as well as the clothes they wear, generate an ambiguous and implacable image pointing to Arbus’s ability for exploring, in a non paternalistic fashion, the complex realities of a childhood that was prematurely exposed to the emotion and maturity of adult life.