In 1912, in Storyville, the notorious red-light district of New Orleans, a photographer named E. J. Bellocq took a series of photographs of the women who worked in the brothels. Rediscovered in the 1950s, Bellocq's photographs have become famous, but the man himself remains a mystery.
In Bellocq's Women Peter Everett performs a feat of fictional reconstruction. All we have of Bellocq are his photographs and a few fragmentary memories; in this novel Everett not only brings the photographer to life - and with him his strange, tortured relationship with his mother and two young girls, one his landlady's daughter, the other a child whore - but also his world - the opium dens and bar rooms of New Orleans and the whore houses with their surreal combination of violence and homeliness.
A brilliant fictional biography of the New Orleans photographer from the author of Matisse's War. In 1912 in Storyville, the notorious red-light district of New Orleans, a photographer named E.J. Bellocq took a series of photographs of the women who worked in the brothels. Rediscovered in the 1950s, Bellocq's photographs have become famous, but the man himself remains a mystery. With only the photographs and a few fragmentary memories, Everett brings the photographer to life - and with him his strange, tortured relationships with his mother and two young girls, and the world he inhabited: the opium dens, the bar rooms and the whore houses.
