Storyville Portrait
c. 1912, printed c. 1970
Medium
gelatin silver print
Dimensions
sheet: 25.2 x 20 cm (9 15/16 x 7 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Patrons' Permanent Fund
Accession Number
1995.36.33
Art Historical Context
**Storyville Portrait** by E.J. Bellocq (c. 1912, printed c. 1970) captures the intimate world of New Orleans' Storyville district, the city's legally sanctioned red-light area from 1897 to 1917. This gelatin silver print, measuring 9 15/16 x 7 7/8 inches, is one of Bellocq's surviving portraits of the women who lived and worked there. Discovered decades after his death in 1949, his glass-plate negatives were printed posthumously, bringing his empathetic gaze to light in the 1960s and 1970s. Bellocq, a reclusive photographer active in early 20th-century New Orleans, documented Storyville with...
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...