Joseph Sterling documented the lives of Chicago’s working-class teenagers between 1959 and 1964, while a student at the Institute of Design under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Not far out of adolescence himself, Sterling would roam the parks, beaches, and streets alongside his subjects, gaining intimate access that resulted in images, like this one, of proximity undercut by rebellious distance. In 1962 Sterling submitted his account of American youth culture as his thesis, The Adolescent Comedy. Before the project was finished, Hugh Edwards included it in a 1961 group exhibition, Four Young Photographers from Chicago. The same year, this image was published on the cover of Aperture magazine and entered the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.