The photograph Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962, by Diane Arbus, shows a boy, with the left strap of his shorts awkwardly hanging off his shoulder, tensely holding his long, stringy, thin arms by his side. Clenched in his right hand is a toy replica hand grenade, his left hand is held in a claw-like gesture, and his facial expression is maniacal. The contact sheet is "revealing with regards to Arbus' working method. She engages with the boy while moving around him, saying she was trying to find the right angle. The sequence of shots she took depicts a really quite ordinary boy who just shows off for the camera. However, the published single image belies this by concentrating on a freakish posture - an editorial choice typical for Arbus who would invariably pick the most expressive image, thereby frequently suggesting an extreme situation. The boy in the photograph is Colin Wood, son of tennis playerSidney Wood. An interview with Colin, with his recollections about the photograph, is presented in the BBC documentary The Genius of Photography. According to The Washington Post, Colin does not specifically remember Arbus taking the photo, but that he was likely "imitating a face I'd seen in war movies, which I loved watching at the time." Later, as a teenager, he was angry at Arbus for "making fun of a skinny kid with a sailor suit", though he enjoys the photograph now.
After writing the song "Teach Your Children" in 1968 and recording it, Graham Nash discovered this photograph in a San Francisco gallery and found that it related to the song's message about nonviolence. The photograph was used, without permission, on the first version of the cover of Canadian punk band SNFU's 1984 album And No One Else Wanted to Play after the band "found the picture in the library." The image is also used on the cover of American indie rock band Cloud Cult's debut album Who Killed Puck?. An original print of the photograph sold for $408,000 in April 2005 at Christie's in New York. The director, John Waters, who had just completed the film, Hairspray, sat for a promotional documentary about himself, entitled, Growing Up, John Waters, and immediately tells the off-camera interviewer he '...felt like the kid...' in this picture. Waters prefaces this by saying there's a photograph which they'll 'never get to show it cause her estate is very, very picky. I promise you, they'll never give you the rights to show it'. During a lecture at New Mexico State University in 1989 Matt Groening told the audience he based the character of Bart Simpson of the TV showThe Simpsons upon this photograph. The image was included in the lecture. Abby comments on "how great" this photograph is in NCIS S8 E6. In William Gibson's "Zero History," Hollis Henry refers to Foley as appearing like an "eerily adult version" of the boy in the photograph.
