In Bellocq’s Ophelia, the group of prostitutes from New Orleans ‘ redlight district in the early 20th century are represented by Ophelia. Her character functions as an everywoman that encompasses the story told in E.J. Bellocq’s Portraits.
Bellocq’s Ophelia is a poetic analysis of perception at its core. The action is all driven by perception, even the inspiration is from photographs, which capture the subjects to be perceived by others. In the beginning of the collection, Ophelia attempts to get a secretarial job as a white woman. She is leaning on people’s perception of her as a white woman even though she has been classified as an octoroon by societal standards of race. Possibly because she was unable to pass and the potential employers saw her as a woman of color, Ophelia was unable to obtain one of these office jobs. In her failure to, she turns to prostitution.
The reader’s first introduction to the brothel is through the poem “Countess P—-‘s Advice for New Girls”. The piece uses a mirror to demonstrate perception and the male gaze. Ophelia is instructed to “see [herself] through his eyes” and then to move her body according to what would be pleasing to him. Already, Ophelia fails to be perceived as white so she must turn to a brothel where she is taught how to be perceived by men. As the epitaph by Toni Morrison suggests, Ophelia did not have whiteness or maleness to fall back on. She had only herself to lean into.
The very nature of photographs is perception. The second epitaph reads, “nevertheless, the camera’s rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses,” drawing forth the wonder of what Bellocq’s camera is disclosing. His images of women both dressed up and posed naked tell a story. Natasha Tretheway turned her perception of the women behind Bellocq’s lens into a narrative of a woman trapped under her identity.