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Bellocq
- Photographs from Storyville the Red Light District of New Orleans
This is a beautiful awe-inspiring book of Ernest Bellocq's photographs of Storyville prostitutes taken around 1912. Many aspects to the story of these photographs make them mysterious and magical, from the prostitutes lives, to Bellocq's life, to the photographs' aestetic, to what happen to the negatives and finally to how they ended up in Lee Friedlander's possession. Every piece of the puzzle was a twist of fate resulting impossibly in the culmination of this book. Lee Friedlander, another influential photographer, pain-stakingly printed Bellocq's glass negatives using an old, traditional printing technique that was more receptive than modern printing material. "In this method the plates were exposed to the Printing Out Paper by indirect sunlight for anywhere from three hours to seven days, depending on the plate's density and the quality of the daylight. Then the paper was given a toning bath of the gold chloride type." The result are beautiful, oversized prints exposing every detail of the life of a prostitute working in Storyville. These photographs give a glimpse into the lives of these women through their poses, expression, environment and choice to be clothed or not. I highly recommend this book to any photographer, historian or New Orleanian. |
