This title was digitized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA).
About Art papers. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1981-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 1, 1981)
Photography in New Orleans D.E. Bookhardt New Orleans occupies a special niche in the development of photo graphy as an art form. This is in spite of the fact that New Orleans is a smallish city with little of the publishing or manufacturing base which normally serves to nourish the practice of photography. But the city is exotic and photogenic, and perhaps as a result has tended to develop a history of practitioners of the art who came to be known for eccentricity and romanticism. A case in point is, of course, Ernest Bellocq, the arch-eccentric, hydro cephalic documentor of the city’s Storyville bordello district and its cast of characters. As a result of Louis Malle’s cinematic efforts, Bellocq may have become the most famous obscure photographer ever to be enshrined in motion pictures. Despite being woefully miscast — Keith Carradine had little to do with the reality of Bellocq—the film did suc ceed in capturing the ambience of the place and time, and the photo grapher’s obsession with recording it all. But Bellocq was merely one of a long line of photographic artist anomalies that traces its ancestry back to about 1840, the year a Parisian mulatto named Jules Lion set up a studio in the old quarter of New Orleans. Not much is actually known about Lion, but it is curiously fitting that the first New Orleans photo grapher, the founder of the lineage, was a colored continental who allegedly had been a student of Daguerre. It may seem surprising to some that a free man of color or, to use the local designation, gen de couleur libre should be involved in an artistic entrepreneurial activity in the South in the middle of the nineteenth century, but his was not an isolated case. The Parisian-African Lion was one of the large community of free French mulattoes who had emigrated to New Orleans from Haiti, Martinique, and the continent, joining descendents of French aristocrats and their colored mistresses whose children were the mainstay of the free community. They were not merely the half-caste untouchables that some might sur mise, but, on the contrary, many attended the same schools as their white half-brothers and sisters, and were trained in both the manners and professions of Creole French society. They formed a strange but powerful social force in New Orleans before the Civil War, occupying a social stratum considered second only to the elite French society and leagues above working class white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. French white and mulat to families were buried side by side in “good” Catholic cemetaries, while all but the most influential white Protes tant “WASPS” were denied entry. The excavation of New Orleans photography is a weighty task, and even now the archivists and archeo logists are sifting through the dust and detritus of darkrooms past, prob ing for long-buried secrets. At least one book is currently nearing comple tion, and a few private studies have already been completed. Barring un foreseen surprises, the next character in the pantheon of local luminaries would seem to be George Francois Mugnier, a French New Orleanian who documented the Belle Epoque in Louisiana. Active between 1880 and 1910, Mugnier was a local version of the Parisian documentarian Eugene Atget. Both men are noteworthy for the assiduous attention to sharply etched detail that characterized their work. And both labored unpreten tiously to record all manner of activities and lifestyles that characterized their respective cities at the turn of the century. The compari- sion is ultimately an apt one in that both artists were noted for the clarity and seemingly timeless quality of still ness associated with their work. Bellocq was active from the early part of the century until his death in the 1940’s. Although he is most famous for his Storyville photos “dis covered” by Lee Friedlander and published by the Museum of Modern Art, Bellocq was also a commercial and industrial photographer who did many local architectural and mari time related jobs. A strange figure, sometimes compared to Toulouse- Lautrec, Ernest Bellocq can also be compared to the Parisian Brassai, because of his obsessive interest in recording the presumed “darker side” of local life. His legendary documentation of the opium dens of New Orleans’ Chinatown have been lost, unfortunately. Another French born New Orleans photographer was Mother St. Croix, a Catholic nun who painstakingly recorded the life of her cloistered order. Active in the first quarter of the century, her meticulously pro duced glass plates are still Church property, although the New Orleans Museum of Art is currently negotiat ing to borrow them for the proposed retrospective. Noteworthy also is Eugene Delcroix, a romantic luminist noted for his landscapes. Delcroix, active between the 1930’s and the late 1950’s, was exhibited all over this country and the world, although since has fallen into obscurity. A similar and perhaps slightly less deserved fate has also befallen the work of Delcroix’s contemporary, “Pops” Whitesell. Whitesell, a transplanted mid-westerner, earned his living as a portraitist in the French Quarter, but was actually the photo graphic incarnation of painter Norman Rockwell. Whitesell was a master of Rockwell-esque lighting and ambience in his renderings of Americana. Once considered a lead ing American photographer, Whitesell’s work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian, the Royal Photo graphic Gallery in London, and in Europe and Japan as well. It may soon be time for a revival of Whitesell’s better works. The real giant of New Orleans photography seemed at one time destined for the same veil of obscurity that has befallen Whitesell, but perhaps the man and his work were too vital for that to come about. It would have certainly been our loss, because Clarence Laughlin, the state’s French-lrish iconoclast, has long been a pioneering if suppressed force in world photography. Uncom promising, he has never been easy to categorize, hence he has been the nemesis of the academician. What does one make of this plantation-bred Gurdjieffian anarchist and symbolist poet who was once at fisticuffs with Edward Steichen? Perhaps the sim plest explanation is that Laughlin is an explorer who uses photography, language and Surrealist method ology to attempt to penetrate the reality behind the literal image. His Third World of Photography—The World beyond Documentation and Purism is a philosophic quest which collides head-on with most of the photographic establishment of this country for most of this century to date. Laughlin was “re-discovered” by the French about 15 years ago, and is now regarded in that country to be one of the foremost figures in the history of Surrealism as it relates to photography. Laughlin, who turned 76 in mid-August, is now considered one of the “undervalued” American photographers—although some of his prints sell for more than $1000, because demand far outstrips the sup ply, despite the fact that Laughlin, who still does all his own printing, is known to spend 16 hour days in his darkroom. Ultimately, it is perhaps the dimension of psychological depth and awareness of unseen forces that Laughlin has brought to photo graphy, which will insure his place in photographic history. The last ten years of photography in New Orleans have been a period of furious activity. More talent has sur faced than can adequately be dealt with in one survey article, and the in stitutionalization of the art has pro ceeded in a big way, mainly due to the efforts of the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Contemporary Arts Center, and galleries such as A Gallery for Fine Photography. With a collection now numbering some 5,000 master prints, the New Orleans Museum of Art has the largest museum collection of photo graphic art in the Southeast. Specializing in early twentieth century Europeans and contemporary Americans, the museum also presents several major photography shows each year. Curator Tina Freeman, a respected photographer in her own right, has been supported in her curatorial efforts by John Bullard, the museum’s director who began the drive to build a major collection almost ten years ago. The Contemporaty Arts Center organizes a major Louisiana oriented photography show every year and hosts numerous exhibits of local and national talent. Local artists such as George Dureau, Avery Crounse, Sandra Clark, Michael Smith, and others too numerous to mention in the detail they deserve have found the spacious walls of the C.A.C. a hospitable spawning ground for bud ding national reputations. Certainly, two New Orleans-based artists to watch are Avery Crounse, whose color surrealism functions as a meticulously crafted window into other worlds of consciousness, and George Dureau, whose studies of street punks and other outsiders are as incisive as they are empathetic. Dureau, a Time-Life New Photo grapher of the Year, has been featured in Village Voice centerfolds, at the Samuels Gallery in New York, and in the collection of the National Archive as well. D. E. Bookhardt will examine the contemporary photographers of New Orleans in considerably more detail in the November issue of Art Papers. Art Papers September-October 1981 E.J. Bellocq, untitled (Plate 17 from E.J. Bellocq: Storyville Portraits, Museum of Modern Art, 1970), modern silver print on printing-out paper by Lee Friedlander from the original plates, c. 1912 (photo: courtesty of Lee Friedlander).
