The photo shoot took place in a New York studio and featured elements common to standard adult soft-core photography:
The images returned to the headlines decades later through the work of appropriation artist Richard Prince. In 1983, Prince re-photographed Gross’s image of Shields and titled it Spiritual America .
The decade also witnessed a growing backlash. By the 1980s, the had intensified, and the so‑called ”kiddie porn“ hysteria —fueled by religious conservatives and anti‑pornography feminists alike—made images like Gross‘s increasingly untenable in mainstream contexts. As one critic observed, ”Not only time but the activism of the religious right and the anti‑porn left have unquestionably altered the climate in which we view pictures like these.”