Click to view Bellocq: Photographs From Storyville
The Red Light District of New Orleans
Reproduced from prints made by Lee Friedlander
Introduction by Susan Sontag
Text by John Szarkowski
Random House

In 1958 Lee Friedlander saw Larry Borenstein's eighty-nine glass negatives of the photographer E.J. Bellocq's work. The photographs of New Orleans' Storyville prostitutes haunted her for almost ten years until she purchased them. A 1970 showing of the obscure prints at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and a book from the show finally brought Bellocq's portraits into the light.

Long out of print, that same collection is now seen (expanded by 18 photos) in a new edition with the art now reproduced the same size as the original prints. The text by John Szarkowski, former director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, is based on interviews with people who knew Bellocq - a fellow photographer, several musicians, a writer and a former prostitute who was one of Bellocq's subjects.

The Storyville women, beautiful, open and receptive to Bellocq's eye, seduce us into their world, the clandestine realm of one of this country's few closed and legalized red light districts.