A woman lies on an ironing board set up behind her house, dressed in a loose shirt, knickers, and dark stockings, kicking her heels while playing with her miniature dog. Two women sit on a flowered rug, sharing a bottle of wine and playing cards. A pretty woman sits in her window, nude and relaxed, smiling at the camera. A woman sits quietly in a plain wooden chair against a rumpled, makeshift backdrop, her smock off her shoulders, her hands tucked protectively under her arms, looking thoughtfully off to one side.

The surroundings in the photos are generally meager, even dismal - - plain rooms with flowered wallpapers, sometimes minimally decorated with college pennants or small mementos. The quality of the photographic plates reinforces the mood. Many are scratched, peeling, stained, or broken. Some have sections that are missing entirely. In most of the nude photographs, the women's faces have been crudely, almost violently, scratched away entirely -- (see E .J. Bellocq) perhaps by Bellocq himself, perhaps to protect their identities. And yet there is a basic kind of grounded sensuality that the women in these photos convey, quite different from the affectedly mirthful conventions of the classic pinup or the coy French postcard. It is the sensuality of women at ease with themselves and with the sexuality of their bodies, an ease that was hardly typical of women of their time.

Bellocq's portraits show the women in various poses and degrees of undress, comfortable with their nudity and at ease in front of the camera; a few appear fully clothed, showing off their finest lace dresses and favorite pets. None of the photographs depict sexual acts or even suggest the presence of a man other than the photographer, whose pictures convey respect rather than voyeurism.

After Bellocq's death in 1949, these photographs remained unknown for years before being discovered, purchased, restored and printed by photographer Lee Friedlander. Bellocq also reportedly photographed scenes inside the opium dens of New Orleans' Chinatown, but unfortunately none of this work survives.