After Ernest J. Bellocq
(American/Louisiana, 1873-1949)
"Storyville Resident with Pet Dog", 1960s
gelatin silver print
later printing from ca. 1912 glass plate negative by Dan Leyrer.
Matted, glazed and framed.
sheet 10" x 8", framed 12" x 10"
Provenance: Harmanson's Art and Book Store, New Orleans, Louisiana; Private collection, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Notes: It was not until a collection of glass plate negatives turned up in a French Quarter antique shop, that the evocative Storyville photographs by Ernest Bellocq surfaced in the late 1950s. At the turn of the century, a red-light district was designated on Basin Street and became known as Storyville. Owned by Tom Anderson, Josie Arlington and Madame Piazza, the brothels opened jazz clubs and saloons on the first floors with the women's rooms above. Bellocq developed relationships with the prostitutes that worked in Storyville and would come in the daytime to photograph them. In this charming image, the woman broadly smiles while holding her pet dog.

Bellocq's glass plate negatives eventually were purchased by Larry Borenstein, a French Quarter art dealer. Borenstein had local photographer Dan Leyre print the images off the glass plate negatives revealing the background of the brothels that would have been edited out by Bellocq. Borenstein sold the glass plate negatives to New York City photographer Lee Friedlander in 1970 who printed his own version that were exhibited in a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

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