EJ Bellocq: one of America's most famous photographers captured the Storyville women in the era when jazz was being born

Bellocq plate 17
Originally uploaded by bunæn

John Ernest Joseph Bellocq (1873-1949) was a professional photographer who worked in New Orleans during the early 20th century. Bellocq is remembered for his haunting photographs of the prostitutes of Storyville, New Orleans' legalized red light district, says Wikipedia.

All the photographs are portraits of individual women. Some are nude, some dressed respectably, others posed as if acting a mysterious narrative. Many of the negatives were badly damaged, in part deliberately. This encouraged speculation about the reasons why they had been taken and later violated. Many of the faces had been scraped out; whether this was done by E. J. Bellocq himself, his Jesuit priest brother who inherited them after E. J.'s death, or someone else is unknown.