A fictional Bellocq features in Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through
Slaughter, a title all too appropriate now.
Apparently, if I remember correctly, Bellocq's 'work' was as an
engineering photographer, which is even more 'ironic' I guess.
And I just heard that there have been more storms this year than usual
& another's growing out there somewhere....
I would like to hope that Stephen is right about a possible
impeachment, but I don't think so (indeed, the right' spin is already
hard at work 'proving' that the pres has done a magnificent job just as
he did after 9/11!). And what might happen to the Supreme Court (for at
least 25 years) is more than sad to contemplate. In fact I read
somewhere that Bush might choose to elevate either Scaglia or Thomas to
Chief Justice (now there's something truly terrible to contemplate).
Doug
On 6-Sep-05, at 7:17 AM, Ken Wolman wrote:
> Jelly Roll wasn't the only important artist to emerge from New
> Orleans. Not even musicians. There was Ernest J. Bellocq, the
> photographer, whose surreptitious project is his enduring fame, a
> great documentary of the Storyville whorehouses where, according to
> the article, prostitution was legal at the turn of the last century.
>
> http://www.corpse.org/issue_10/gallery/bellocq/
>
> The article--quite lengthy and with some potentially offensive
> photographs--is in Andrei Codrescu's journal, _Exquisite Corpse_.
>
> The terrible irony of the journal's title just struck me. As did this
> question...was _EQ_ still at Tulane, and are Codrescu and the others
> involved okay? The commentators I heard this morning said the full
> horror of last week in New Orleans may not strike home until the
> bodies begin being turned as the waters are drained back into the
> lake. Nobody appears to be arguing with Mayor Nagin's estimate of
> 10,000 dead.
>
> In the face of such death, art is...what? inconsequetial? secondary?
> what we can keep? It's not unfair to ask how much visual and literary
> work has been and will be lost. Who can know? The fact that Lee
> Friedlander as long ago as 1967 was able to rescue Bellocq's
> Storyville work, printed it from the 8x10 camera glass plates, and
> exhibit it in 1970, is one of the small miracles that float over even
> a tragedy. They are valuable if only as documents of a moment that
> came, stood still, and passed by. It will be a miracle if the whole
> city does not suffer nullification.
>
> Ken
>
> --
> Kenneth Wolman
> Proposal Development Department
> Room SW334
> Sarnoff Corporation
> 609-734-2538
>
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
not random, these
crystalline structures, these
non-reversible orders, this
camera forming tendencies, this
edge of greater length, this
lyric forever error, this
something embarrassingly clear, this
language we come up against
Kathleen Fraser
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