·EJ Bellocq, Storyville Portraits, c. 1910–1912
·Natasha Trethewey, Bellocq's Ophelia, 2002

https://i.imgur.com/r49lc4p.jpg

I wear my best gown for the picture—
white silk with seed pearls and ostrich feathers—
my hair in a loose chignon. Behind me,
Bellocq's black scrum just covers the laundry—
tea towels, bleached and frayed, drying on the line.
I look away from his lens to appear
demure, to attract those guests not wanting
the lewd sights of Emma Johnson's circus.
Countess writes my description for the book—
“Violet,” a fair-skinned beauty, recites
poetry and soliloquies; nightly
she performs her tableau vivant, becomes
a living statue, an object of art—
and I fade again into someone I'm not.

After reading Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter, I wanted to see more of the EJ Bellocq photographs that inspired many of the scenes – and so much of the mood – of that novel. The portraits he took of Storyville prostitutes were found many years after his death, and many of them are damaged, but this somehow adds to their air of poignancy. It's remarkable how much feeling and personality is captured in these strange shots, which Bellocq took privately and never showed to anyone except a few close friends.

They hit us, now, through multiple layers of interpretation – all carefully posed and set up by Bellocq, never candid, and therefore making you constantly aware of how we see these women through a male gaze, however complex. Natasha Trethewey's second poetry collection attempts to give them back a voice – an imagined one, of course, and therefore not without its own problems, but even so it's quite a powerful and inspiring feat of creative energy.

It's possible to flick back and forth between her book of poems and a book of the photographs, and look for one-to-one matches – I certainly did, and many of the sonnets do represent little bursts of direct ecphrasis:

https://i.imgur.com/LJdQ7MA.jpg

I pose nude for this photograph, awkward,
one arm folded behind my back, the other
limp at my side. Seated, I raise my chin,
my back so straight I imagine the bones
separating in my spine, my neck lengthening
like evening shadows. When I see this plate
I try to recall what I was thinking—
how not to be exposed, though naked, how
to wear skin like a garment, seamless.
Bellocq thinks I'm right for the camera, keeps
coming to my room. These plates are fragile,
he says, showing me how easy it is
to shatter this image of myself, how
a quick scratch carves a scar across my chest.

But many of them don't necessarily have direct correspondences in that way. Instead, they make up a sort of imagined biography of one (pick one) of the girls in a New Orleans ‘coloured’ brothel like Lula White's or Willie Piazza's in the second decade of the century – the letters home, the reflections on the different types of customer, the mixed feelings about posing for Bellocq.

It troubles me to think that I am suited
for this work—spectacle and fetish—
a pale odalisque. But then I recall
my earliest training—childhood—how
my mother taught me to curtsy and be still
so that I might please a white man, my father.
For him I learned to shape my gestures,
practiced expressions on my pliant face.

https://i.imgur.com/qEct5K4.jpg

I've learned the camera well—the danger
of it, the half-truths it can tell, but also
the way it fastens us to our pasts, makes grand
the unadorned moment.

https://i.imgur.com/7W6OEnX.jpg

In Trethewey's verse, these women are wry and articulate, thoughtful, analytical, well aware of their circumstances and opportunities. ‘I'm not so foolish / that I don't know this photograph that we make / will bear the stamp of his name, not mine,’ one says. How realistic it all is no one can say – certainly the faces in Bellocq's pictures suggest a variety of different responses and emotions whose range goes beyond even what can be captured in Trethewey's poems. Her writing sends you back to the photos, studying each subject anew, and thinking:

Imagine her a moment later—after
the flash, blinded—stepping out
of the frame, wide-eyed, into her life. ( )

Trethewey's second collection of poems is inspired by a photo by E.J. Bellocq of a mixed-race prostitute known only as Ophelia. In her poetry, Trethewey imagines what the woman's story might have been and ruminates on what a photograph reveals or conceals. Beautifully crafted poems that would be a pleasure to read again. ( )

Truthway, Natasha

Disarray the darkness,
ventilate the light.

The poet is there
only in her words.

Look at her eyes,
her glossy lips,
straight white teeth
her chosen do.
The photo, small
square black & white:
nonfiction : false

Bellocq’s Ophelia
on the cover
is elegance, innocence,
intimidation, distance:
pure fiction : truer

Born in Gulfport, Mississippi.
First book awarded
this and that.
Second one, a finalist
for this and that,
a 2003 Notable Book.
Third, a Pulitzer.
Teaches at Emory.

Why am I
so despondent?
What is she
to me?


Truthway’s Ophelia

But in her words
Ophelia lives:
livelier, lovelier,

in her letters, diary,
a photo, vignette,
her brothel
her dress, undressed

She lives,
livelier, lovelier,
herself.

Not.

Ophelia’s Bellocq

Papá, she calls him,
a quiet man.

What do you want?
a man asked her,
fully clothed.
I could not answer,
she says.
Could not.
Not.

Once she could have:
clean living,
a place with light

Bellocq talks to her,
she says,
of light, of shadows
She has splurged,
bought a Kodak:

crystals coalescing
like constellations of stars
on film

He lets her be herself,
everything else a prop,
that’s all.

This photograph
we make,
she says,
will bear . . .
his name, not mine.

Not. ( )

Haunting. Beautiful. Lyrical. Exquisite. ( )

What can I say I like her poetry ( )