The Priest and the Photographer

[covingtoncat73]

You don't get this with eBooks, people. Don't get me wrong, I love eBooks. Still...Always look for a bookplate or a signature. I hang my head in shame that I haven’t looked more closely at the ancestral tomes before now. In my defense, they are, in large part, written in German, with some in French. That being said, oh my goodness.

This probably won’t mean much to you unless you know about Storyville and the photographer Ernst Bellocq. Storyville was the famous red light district of New Orleans and was a font of both vice and traditional jazz. In the early days of the 20th century, my great-great grandmother's first cousin, Ernst Bellocq, took pictures of the Storyville working ladies. These were not discovered until after his death but many are now, oddly, at MOMA in New York (naked pictures of an artistic, beginning of the 20th century nature be here).

Anyway, Ernst and his brother, Leon, who became a Jesuit Priest, grew up in a house on Conti Street right off of Rampart with their grandfather, Paul Aldige, a prominent merchant, their parents, their aunt Pauline Aldige McCarthy, and her husband Leon McCarthy.

[rollei]

The book must be worthy of some good money.