Compassionate prostitutes enabled the deformed photographer E. J. Bellocq to create one of the most acclaimed collections of historic photographs in the United States.

In 1897, the city council of New Orleans, Louisiana passed a unique ordinance that confined and regulated prostitution within a specified district of the city. Nicknamed "Storyville" after Alderman Sidney Story (who proposed the ordinance), this district was home to legalized prostitution from January 1, 1898 until November 12, 1917.
Ernest J. Bellocq was a hideous hydrocephalic who earned a modest living as a commercial photographer

in New Orleans during these years. Like Toulouse-Lautrec in France, Bellocq frequented brothels, where he was accepted as a fellow outcast by sympathetic prostitutes. Though Bellocq did not--perhaps could not--partake of their services, these kind ladies allowed him to move freely among them and take photographs for his own collection. Though many are nudes, Bellocq's portraits reveal a simple frankness and respect for his subjects that runs completely counter to pornography. They number among the finest works of photographic art this country has produced, and are the only true-to-life visual record of this extraordinary part of American history.