

His activities fascinate Violet, though she believes he is falling in love with her mother, which makes her jealous. Madame Nell agrees only after he offers to pay.īellocq becomes a fixture in the brothel, photographing the prostitutes, mostly Hattie. He asks to be allowed to take photographs of the women. Bellocq comes with his camera, Hattie and Violet are the only people awake. Hattie has given birth to a baby boy and has a 12-year-old daughter, Violet, who lives in the house. In 1917, during the last months of legal prostitution in Storyville, the red-light district of New Orleans, Louisiana, Hattie is a prostitute working at an elegant brothel run by the elderly, cocaine-sniffing Madame Nell.
