Bellocq’s Rebellion - Remembering Hidden Loves
E. J. Bellocq (John Ernest Joseph Bellocq (1873-1949) ), who was an inspiration for Louis Malle’s 1978 film “Pretty Baby,” was an artist who made the uncommon decision to photograph “undesirable” women of his era. He did not just photograph prostitutes. He photographed them in their chosen environments, allowing the prostitutes to partially compose their own visual stories.
(Click on images to view them individually.)
Cast of Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby:
Artworks by E. J. Bellocq:
Bellocq’s photo of his desk’s collection of art.
Both the art we create and the art we collect reveal a lot about each of us. Important questions to consider are:
a) What art do I save?
b) What art do I save and hide?
The latter question has often been more intriguing to me. Why is it that we keep things in shoeboxes in the back of our closets? Bellocq hid his glass negatives in his sofa. In his day, the photographs were controversial and maybe even illegal. But those are not the only reasons we hide certain artworks that we cherish.
Two other provocative and introspective questions are:
a) What art do I enjoy putting on my living room walls?
b) What art do I use to decorate the walls of my mind?
Bellocq thought it was important to save snapshots of these “undesirable” and “sinful” womens’ lives. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec also thought this practice was important, and some of his best artworks are of call women doing their intimate and casual daily activities.
What art do you think is so important that it causes you to rebel in some way against majority sway?
Bellocq’s Rebellion was not only in taking and printing pictures of hookers. His rebellion was in believing these women had beauty and a soul within their chosen existence. I don’t think his photographs imply these women are “scandalous” or “need to be saved.” His subjects tend to be very familiar and at ease in their surroundings. These women have created comfortable environments - even while involving themselves in activities that are inherently random, transitory, and risk-intense.
Bellocq did not often pose them in erotic or arousing positions. Their postures are more often either casual or statuesque, consistent with classical poses of admirable women.
The question of “Who scratched out the identities of the women in the photos?” is a question that will probably never be answered. But even if it was Bellocq in his later years, experiencing some change of heart due to intense public or private persuasion, it is understandable.
It is analogous to Walt Whitman’s softening of his homosexual language and themes in his later editions of his own “Leaves of Grass.” Yes, the recanting may have been done by the artist, but that does not diminish the “truth” or beauty of the original artistic statements.
I don’t think Bellocq’s art is clearly pro-prostitution or anti-prostitution.
I don’t know whether Bellocq was sympathetic to the practice of prostitution, but I think his artworks suggest he was sympathetic to the individual women who were also prostitutes - and that to me is beautiful and worth remembering, even if it was a hidden rememberance.
I saved the below photo until last because it makes me cry. Here is a woman, likely a prostitute, naked and bare, drawing a white butterfly on her wall. A person does not need to have an art history degree, or to know that mythologically butterflies were often a representation of the soul, to understand the beauty and pathos of this photograph. Likely one of the few people who didn’t “get it” was the person who scratched out her face. Yet remarkably, even that artistic intrusion does not disarm the artwork’s universal communications.
This woman probably chose in some ways to live inside those walls, those boundaries, but that does not mean she is “less than” or “not equal to” all that one soul can aspire to. It is beyond beautiful that she is naked, drawing a white butterfly on the walls surrounding her.
Thank you Mr. Bellocq for your ideas and artistic rememberances.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._J._Bellocq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Baby_%281978_film%29
http://www.corpse.org/issue_10/gallery/bellocq/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaves_of_grass
Here is a review I wrote about a recent edition of Leaves of Grass.
Some images above are courtesy of the Tulane Special Collections.
http://specialcollections.tulane.edu/
Most Recent Artworks Index of all the Artists’ Artworks my43things
oh! wonderful just wonderful collection of one the best turn of the century photographers…not really a pictorial one and yet not a straight one too…absolutely FINE ART!
Simply beautiful
It was found by Lee Friedlander, who bought a large collection of Bellocq’s original negatives in the late 1960’s, that it was Bellocq himself who scratched out the faces of some of the women in his photos. The scratches were done on a wet plate, which is seen by the way the edges of the scratches fold over onto each other. This was very deliberate, and is a large part of the art rather than a negation. Please update your site to include this information. Bellocq’s genius was in taking a familiar subject and then showing it to us from “outside the box” as some would say. The scratched faces give us pause to think, and thus tell the true story of Storyville.
SIA: Thank you very much Catie. Thank you for adding those ideas. You may be right. I understand that it is possible Bellocq scratched out the faces, but it is an inference that, like many artistic mysteries, is not verifiable because Bellocq had died when the negatives were found. Different theories surround that debate. Others speculate that other models or people who found the negatives, during his lifetime, damaged them. In the movie “Pretty Baby” (based on Bellocq’s life), Bellocq and one of his models (if I remember correctly) are both seen damaging the plate negatives at different times during moments of anger, doubt, and other conflicting emotions. I understand the same artist who could have taken such thoughtful and kind photographs could also have be torn with that culture’s militant guilt toward such imagery.
The mystery is artistic in itself. Whether the images were intentionally damaged by the artist or someone else, the artworks survive and thrive, speaking to their relevance, intelligence, and universality.