In Louis Malle's film Pretty Baby, Brooke Shields plays the 13 year old girl auctioned into prostitution in New Orleans in the early 1900s. With its jazz soundtrack and art nouveau interiors, another authentic period touch is the appearance of a diffident photographer who captures life behind-the-scenes inside the brothel.
What is little known is that the screenplay was based on the true story of E. J. Bellocq, who lugged his heavy 8" x 10" view camera to the red-light quarter each morning and recorded this unique episode in American history.
During this era, sitters would pose motionless while the photographer hid below a cape waiting for the flash of chemicals that would light the scene. This protracted process created images that were stiff and formal, but Bellocq managed to produce informal, naturalistic nudes that were way ahead of their time.
His vast collection, probably many hundreds of photographs, vanished in the years following Bellocq's death in 1949. They would have been lost to the world in their entirety had not Lee Friedlander discovered... MORE
Images from "The Lost Photographs of Storyville"
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