Prostitutes of Storyville

Photographer John Ernest Joseph Bellocq (1873 - 1949) was born in the French Quarter in New Orleans. In his earlier days he was a bit of a dandy, but during the later part pf his life he lived alone and got a reputation for being eccentric and unfriendly, with little interest in anything than his photography. He earned his living mostly by shooting landmarks, ships and machinery for local companies, but he also photographed the hidden life of opium dens in Chinatown and of the prostitutes in Storyville - the latter which I want to show you some pics from. All the Storyville photographs are of women, posing either naked, clothed or wearing masks. These pictures were all taken in the beginning of the 1900s, and give you a bit of an inside look at how the prostitutes lived in New Orleans in those days. Many of the faces has been scraped out, but it's not certain who did this, whether it was Bellocq himself, or his Jesuit priest brother, who inherited the photos after Bellocq's death. Here are a few of them...

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