Ernest James Bellocq

The recorded working language is English. Work by Ernest James Bellocq is recorded in the collections of Minneapolis Institute of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, National Gallery of Victoria, Museum of Modern Art and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

• Name — E. J. Bellocq • Birth Name — Jean Ernest Joseph Bellocq • Born — 19 August 1873 • Birthplace — New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. • Died — 3 October 1949 • Place of death — New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. • Resting Place — Saint Louis Cemetery • Education — College of the Immaculate Conception • Occupation — Photographer • Years Active — 1917–1949

• Illustration — One of Bellocq's Storyville photographs, c. 1912. • Illustration — One of the deliberately damaged Storyville photographs. Ernest John Bellocq was born in 1872 and baptised at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in New Orleans. He was raised in an aristocratic white Creole family in the French Quarter. His father, Paul, worked as a bookkeeper and later as secretary and treasurer for a wholesale firm. His mother, Marie, was the daughter of a wealthy French merchant. The family employed a nurse and lived in comfortable circumstances near the French Opera House. Ernest's younger brother, Leo, would later become a Jesuit priest. Bellocq completed 10 years of classical education at the College of the Immaculate Conception.

After his education, his father secured him a position at his firm. He subsequently moved between jobs as a bookkeeper and clerk at various businesses in and around the French Quarter. By 1898, the year Storyville (New Orleans' legally sanctioned prostitution district) opened, Bellocq had become recognized as one of the city's up-and-coming amateur photographers. A local publication that year identified him as a descendant of one of the city's most prominent Creole families. In 1902, his mother died. Around this time, Bellocq left employment and committed himself to photography as a profession. He established a commercial studio, at one point operating from Canal Street. During the First World War, he worked for a period as an industrial photographer for a shipbuilding company. His commercial work included architecture, class portraits, grave plots, and copy work for museums. During the early 1900s, Bellocq undertook a private photographic project in Storyville, carrying an 8 x 10-inch view camera to document the women working there. He kept this project confidential from almost everyone, sharing it with only a small number of close associates. The project produced glass negative plates, some of which show the same subject photographed twice, clothed and unclothed. A number of the negatives were defaced, with the women's faces scratched from the emulsion. Later examination by Lee Friedlander suggested the scratching occurred while the emulsion was still wet, indicating Bellocq himself was likely responsible, having done so shortly after developing the plates.

In his later years, Bellocq lived in a small furnished apartment at 619 Dumaine Street in the French Quarter, subsisting on a small annuity. He maintained a daily routine of walking to camera shops around the city, visiting a bus station for lunch, and frequenting the local Kodak store, where he was known to fall asleep in a chair. He maintained several forgotten bank accounts at various institutions, with balances ranging from a little over a dollar to more than six hundred. His health declined, and a doctor described him as senile in his final period. He was noted for wearing a piece of rope as a belt and appearing dishevelled in his old age.

The mystique about Bellocq has inspired several fictional versions of his life, notably Louis Malle's 1978 film Pretty Baby, in which Bellocq was played by Keith Carradine. He also appears in Michael Ondaatje's novel Coming Through Slaughter and is a protagonist in Peter Everett's novel Bellocq's Women. These works take many liberties with the facts of Bellocq's life. The photographs have inspired imaginative literature about the women in them. There are several collections of poems, notably Brooke Bergan's Storyville: A Hidden Mirror and Natasha Trethewey's Bellocq's Ophelia. The 1974 book Storyville, New Orleans: Being an Authentic, Illustrated Account of the Notorious Red-Light District by Al Rose gives an overview of the history of prostitution in New Orleans with many photographs by Bellocq. In 1971, Storyville Portraits won a mention at the Rencontres d'Arles's Book Award, France. The 1983 novel Fat Tuesday by R. Wright Campbell features a thinly veiled depiction of Bellocq, a photographer named B.E. Locque.

Ernest James Bellocq is recorded as photographer.