NOLA is a tribute to classic photography of the early 20th century; particularly the works of E.J. Bellocq. He did a series that has been called the “Storyville Portraits” which was photos of prostitutes in the red light district of New Orleans. While, stylistically speaking, the shoot is certainly different in tonal quality, Dame Lebeau and I set out to do a shoot that pays homage to his work, particularly those portraits.

We shot this in New Orleans at an apartment in the French Quarter. It was really nice to create a body of work in the city where the inspiration was shot. Dame Lebeau is in love with that city and I must say that if I didn’t have several responsibilities keeping me where I live, I might consider uprooting and going to live there. The place is wonderful.

This set is almost exactly how it was shot. I shot it in a sepia tone and chose to hand hold a low light shoot to achieve a more Pictorialist effect. I really love work from that time and enjoyed the challenge of staying with what I shot. I messed around with the RAW files some but at the end of it all felt that the “as shot” jpegs had a special something about them. What we caught there seemed to be more in the spirit of what we aimed to achieve. This has probably been one of my favorite sets in the last few months. Of course Dame Lebeau was amazing and really the set probably wouldn’t have worked near as well without her. So, here’s to her.

- Robert Henry