Bellocq's Women

About this book

A brilliant fictional biography of the New Orleans photographer from the author of Matisses War. In 1912 in Storyville the notorious red-light district of New Orleans a photographer named E.J. Bellocq took a series of photographs of the women who worked in the brothels. Rediscovered in the 1950s Bellocqs photographs have become famous but the man himself remains a mystery. With only the photographs and a few fragmentary memories Everett brings the photographer to life - and with him his strange tortured relationships with his mother and two young girls and the world he inhabited: the opium dens the bar rooms and the whore houses.