Eyes puffy and squinting, nearly closed as if swollen shut, lips curled and slightly open, an unidentified man handing out pamphlets in Paris has been frozen in a split second of uncompromising reality. Lisette Model's unforgiving, almost cruel portrait exposes in him a shabbiness and ugliness that serves as a metaphor for society at its worst.

Model frequently photographed greatly overweight subjects, as if to draw a parallel between the excesses of their lives and bodies. She mounted the print on a torn section of the society column of the newspaper, contrasting this gasping, sweaty man with the chronicles of the glamorous elite to emphasize her interest in the class struggle.