[2] Fred Holland Day was the son of a wealthy Boston merchant, and was a man of independent means for all his life.

[3] Day's life and works were controversial because he took an unconventional approach to religious subjects and often photographed male nudes.

"[5] Day spent much time among poor immigrant children in Boston, tutoring them in reading and mentoring them.

Beaumont Newhall states that he visited Algiers, possibly as a result of reading Wilde and Gide.

Day was a friend of Louise Imogen Guiney and Ralph Adams Cram, and a member of social clubs, such as the Visionists, formed around shared interests in arts and literature.

The populist Photographic News saw it as the result "of a diseased imagination, of which much has been fostered by the ravings of a few lunatics ... unacademic ... and eccentric".

Day belonged to the pictorialist movement which regarded photography as a fine art and which often included symbolist imagery.

The pictorial and symbolist photographic style went out of fashion in the face of the radical shift towards early modernism in the art world.