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Storyville was the infamous red-light district of New Orleans. It was a world where normative social values didn't apply and was shrouded in mystery and myth until the photographs of E.J. Bellocq were rediscovered. Bellocq's depictions of Storyville's sex workers have typically been treated as tragic, ominous and emblematic of New Orleans' singularity. Yet, such interpretations have projected gendered stereotypes of frailty and victimhood onto the women they portrayed. In Images of Sex Work, Mollie LeVeque interrogates these glib readings and argues that sex work was a routine aspect of life in a modern city. She supports this theory by examining a range of cultural forms such as crime fiction, illustrations and paintings from contemporary urban centres like Paris, London and New York. In doing so, she advances the new argument that Bellocq humanised his subjects, de-sensationalised sex work and gave these women the dignity they were all too often denied.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: (Self-)Representing Storyville Women
Chapter 2: The 'White Slave' and the Question of Ambiguity
Chapter 3: A Fog of Violence, Voyeurism, and Crime
Chapter 4: The 'Paris-ification' of New Orleanian Vice
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Mollie Le Veque received her PhD from the University of East Anglia, UK. Her research interests are the interplay of images, archives and texts, fandom histories, erased urban spaces and the Storyville Portraits.
Summary
Storyville was the infamous red-light district of New Orleans. It was a world where normative social values didn’t apply and was shrouded in mystery and myth until the photographs of E.J. Bellocq were rediscovered. Bellocq’s depictions of Storyville’s sex workers have typically been treated as tragic, ominous and emblematic of New Orleans’ singularity. Yet, such interpretations have projected gendered stereotypes of frailty and victimhood onto the women they portrayed. In Images of Sex Work, Mollie LeVeque interrogates these glib readings and argues that sex work was a routine aspect of life in a modern city. She supports this theory by examining a range of cultural forms such as crime fiction, illustrations and paintings from contemporary urban centres like Paris, London and New York. In doing so, she advances the new argument that Bellocq humanised his subjects, de-sensationalised sex work and gave these women the dignity they were all too often denied.
