This photograph is a witty reprise of one of Kertesz's most surreal works, Arm and Ventilator (1937).

Photographer's stamp on verso. Also inscribed "March 2, 1970" and numbered "No.25A" in pencil on verso by the photographer.

Instead of an apparently detached arm extending through the ventilator, however, in the present photograph, it is a fragmented figure in the form of a bust which suggests a disconcerting human presence alongside the mechanical.

By being rendered from behind, the bust's intended three-dimensionality is revealed to be false. The sculpture becomes mysterious, hinting at the Kertész's later appropriation by the Surrealists who found his juxtapositions and tangential perspectives both displacing and beautiful.

According to the Artist's Estate a more matter-of-fact photograph also exists of this bust shown from the front. The displacement of this image, however, infuses the photograph with Surrealist notions of contortions, and the redefinition of the inverted body.

This photograph comes from the collection of Nathan Resnick. Resnick was chairman of the Department of Art, Long Island University at the time. Resnick was well known to Kertesz and the photography world, having co-written "The Third Eye: A New World of Exploratory Photography" with Konrad Kramer and Manuel Komroff in 1962.