The photograph shows Pablo Picasso and scenic artists sitting on the front cloth for Parade during a break in painting it. It would have been painted flat on the floor (the 'Continental' method) rather than on a paint frame. Hence the unusual perspective.

Parade had a libretto by Jean Cocteau, music by Erik Satie, and costumes and sets designed by Pablo Picasso. The choreographer, Léonide Massine, danced the role of the Chinese Conjuror.

This is one of a collection of a series glass negatives of the ballet Parade, taken by the photographer and film maker, Lachman in Paris of Parade when it was first staged by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, in 1917. The photographs of dancers in costumes for Parade taken backstage, traditionally credited to ‘Lachmann’, were taken by Harry Lachman (1886-1975), the film director and landscape artist. By 1917 he was a respected artists whose works entered the permanent collection of the Louvre and, in 1922, he was decorated Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur. He photographed artists including Picasso, Matisse and Monet and it must be assumed it was this link that led him to photograph Parade. A second significant photographer of Parade was the London-based Malcolm Arbuthnot (1877-1967) who recorded dancers in their costumes in 1919. While Victor du or de Bont recorded Vera Nemchinova and Nicholas Zverev as the two Acrobats ca. 1923.

Photographs of any Diaghilev ballets, especially from the post 1914 period are rare, partly because, for all his promotional skills, Diaghilev did not ensure that regular or comprehensive photographic records were made.