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I’d like to introduce a photographic figure from New Orleans’ past that I’ll be discussing on the blog. Photographer E.J. Bellocq (1873 – 1949) was never really considered a successful artist in his lifetime. Bellocq, who was from an affluent Creole family in New Orleans, took annual photographs for Catholic schools and made glass plate negatives for commercial shipbuilders to generate income, but the artist was often regarded as peculiar, if not an outcast, roaming Basin Street and the Storyville neighborhood with an 8 x 10 view camera or taking day-long naps in the camera shops along Canal Street in his old age.  People have described the physical appearance of a hunchback, hydrocephalic, or dwarfish man who was very shy unless being inquired about his photographs. However it’s unlikely that Bellocq was as strange a character as is posthumously speculated given his steady commercial work.

What is most intriguing perhaps about E.J. Bellocq is the obvious access he seemed to hold in order to make his photographs of prostitutes working in the brothels of the red light district, the spirit of which one can still find today in the French Quarter along Bourbon Street. Photographers like Courtney Asztalos have given a contemporary voice to this historic neighborhood. Perhaps Bellocq was making personal photographs of the women for himself? Maybe Bellocq was expanding his commercial interests to include portraits of sex workers to be used for the notorious Blue Books produced within the District as advertisements? Did Bellocq’s brother, a Jesuit priest, have something to do with the many damaged negatives that survive?