resurrecttheliving:

E.J. Bolocq is famous for his early 20th century photographic portraits of prostitutes in New Orleans’ famous old red light district, Storyville. Many of these women are photographed with their faces in full view, but others were posed in masks or facing away from the camera. A large percentage of them, however, had their faces scratched out when the pictures were being developed, presumably by Belocq himself. No one is fully sure why.

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