The Storyville Photographs
All the photographs are portraits of women. Some are nude, some dressed, others posed as if acting a mysterious narrative. Many of the negatives were badly damaged, in part deliberately, which encouraged speculation. Many of the faces had been scraped out; whether this was done by Bellocq, his Jesuit priest brother who inherited them after E. J.'s death or someone else is unknown. Bellocq is the most likely candidate, since the damage was done while the emulsion was still wet. In a few photographs the women wore masks.
Some prints made by Bellocq have since surfaced. These are far more conventional than the full-negative prints made by Friedlander.
The Storyville photographs not only serve as a record of the prostitutes, but also the interiors of the businesses that housed them.
Read more about this topic: E. J. Bellocq
Famous quotes containing the word photographs:
“A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it—by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)