Storyville Portrait
c. 1912, printed c. 1970
Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
sheet: 25.2 x 20.2 cm (9 15/16 x 7 15/16 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Patrons' Permanent Fund
Accession Number
1995.36.45
Art Historical Context
E.J. Bellocq's *Storyville Portrait*, captured around 1912, offers a poignant glimpse into the hidden world of Storyville, New Orleans' red-light district, which operated legally from 1897 until 1917. As a reclusive photographer working in the city's underbelly, Bellocq the lives of sex workers with remarkable intimacy and dignity, using a large-format camera to produce glass negatives that captured their individuality amid the era's social constraints. This gelatin silver print, made from one of those rediscovered negatives around 1970, exemplifies early 20th-century photographic techniques, ...
About the Artist
E.J. Bellocq
Ernest Joseph Bellocq (1873–1949) was born into an aristocratic white Creole family in New Orleans on August 19, 1873. His father, Paul Bellocq, worked as a bookkeeper, while his mother, Marie, came from a wealthy French merchant family; his younger brother, Leo, became a Jesuit priest and Bellocq's sole heir. Raised near the French Opera House in comfortable circumstances, Bellocq received a clas...