John Ernest Joseph Bellocq was most famous for his portraits of prostitutes in Storyville, the legalized red light district of New Orleans. Most of the negatives were destroyed, but a few were found posthumously – concealed in a couch. A dandy from a wealthy Creole family and an unfriendly antisocial eccentric, Bellocq was a mysterious legend in a dark world of sin and was obsessed with photographing the unwanted.
