Before starting to read Bellocq’s Ophelia I looked up who Bellocq and Ophelia were. However, I found that reading the first sentence of the first poem helped me find a starting point for my research. I started from the painting that describes Ophelia as she “dies face up, eyes and mouth open as if caught in the gasp of her last word or breath” (Tretheway 3). In this passage, Tretheway describes John Millais’s painting of Ophelia, a character in Shakespear’s Hamlet. It is known in Hamlet that Ophelia’s graceful time in the river is ended by her death, but this is not the case in Bellocq’s Ophelia.
John Ernest Joseph Bellocq was a 20th century photographer who worked in New Orleans, known for his photography of prostitutes in the red light district. Most of his photographs were destroyed after his death, but some were found and published in a book. It was known that Bellocq would scratch off the face of the women he was photographing, “these plates are fragile…showing me how easy it is to shatter this image of myself” (Tretheway 42). Although Ophelia is a prostitute, her relationship with Bellocq is unconventional. Their meeting at the hospital shows the depth of Bellocq’s fascination with images that capture local life. His interest was beyond the nudity, going as far as to emphasize the other side of a prostitute’s life.
However, Bellocq was not the only photographer of Ophelia. The description of “a doppelganger whose face I loathe” perfectly captures the standard reaction to an owners mug shot (Tretheway 29). Tretheway also mentions “Tableau vivant” which literally translates into living picture. People would dress themselves accordingly and pose without speaking or moving, and this was a form of entertainment in the 19th century. It was said that this art form fused photography with painting. Tretheway describes Ophelia’s strange postures, which then were accompanied by Countess’s calling of “Tableau vivant” which cued“the musical undulation of my hips, my grace, and my patience” (Tretheway 14).
Throughout Bellocq’s Ophelia, Opehlia is photographed frequently, and these photographs capture the many descriptive moments of her life.
The way Bellocq scratches the faces of his subjects presents insight into the lives of these prostitutes. Ophelia’s image is completely tarnished through the life she lives. She feels like her life is coming to a meaningless end. She also doesn’t feel comfortable in her own skin, as she says her “skin gooseflesh, / the Braille text of my future” (Trethewey 18). She clearly knows that she lives her life blindly and doesn’t live with ambition. The scratching of her face shows that the power the photographer, Bellocq, has over her clearly overpowers her to the point of pointless living.
Sam, this is good initial research that you’ve done into identifying some of the allusions that Trethewey is asking us to be aware of as she writes. I appreciate still more the other ways you have traced her being photographed or seen as an image in the book. Her tableau vivant, however, is not photographed, but is, as you say, intended to be seen as a living, still piece of art.