HUMANITY
Dureau’s photographs celebrate the people of his community who are not usually given a platform of such honest regard. He acquaints us with deformity not as something “freakish” and “other” but, rather, as something natural, presenting his models with unflinching visual clarity while also rendering what resonates as truthful about them as individuals.1
I was a young photographer, discovering what I wanted to focus on, what would be my vision. I explored everything from flora and fauna at the Botanical Gardens, to galleries exhibiting homoerotic photography. My interests seemed pulled toward images of flowers and the nude male. I learned about that through the works of particular photographers who explored gay iconography.
In 1978, I was still living at home in Brooklyn while attending SVA. On one of my many expeditions into Manhattan, I came across some remarkable work by a photographer named Arthur Tress at a downtown gallery called the Robert Samuel Gallery. The gallery exclusively featured male erotica and it is where I was also introduced to the works of Joel Peter Witkin and early Robert Mapplethorpe.
When I saw Tress’ images, I was completely fascinated. I fell in love with one particular photo of two men sleeping and it seemed like they were lightly covered with dust—the sunlight streaming across the photograph was extremely beautiful.
I always thought my last name was Rockefeller because if I wanted to purchase something bad enough, I was going to get it, no matter how broke I was. That’s what happened with a photograph by Arthur Tress. I asked the gallerist how much the image was and he said $125. Although that isn’t much now—in 1978, for a kid still in college and living at home, it was a small fortune.
But I bought it anyway because I had saved some money, and I made sure not to tell my mother or my sister or anybody how much it cost, because they would have thought I lost my mind.
Last year, when I was back in Portland, Oregon, I visited Ampersand Bookstore—a very hip shop that carries art and photography books. I have been there a few times over the years, and they knew I was a photography and book collector. They also knew that I only wanted to see photobooks that dealt with the male image. That day last year, the owner, Myles Haselhorst, said to me, “Do you know about Arthur Tress?”
“Of course!” I replied.
“Oh, I have something special,” he said, and went to the back of the store.
I made sure not to get too excited because I knew Tress’ work was very expensive. A few minutes later, he returned and showed me a triptych box with a book about Tress in the middle and two provocative photographs by him on the left and right sides. They were both signed and numbered from the years 1979–1980. I couldn’t believe it.
“It’s been sitting here forever—uh—how’s $350?” he asked me.
My mouth dropped.
“Oh, that’s perfect—just put it on the counter,” I said to him, thinking to myself that each of those prints would easily go for a thousand dollars. I knew I was getting a deal and I was more than delighted.
But back in 1978, purchasing the work of Arthur Tress was the beginning of my photography collecting. Black-and-white photographs completely fascinated me and I knew, even then, that whenever I made money, I was going to make that investment—and, boy, did I ever!
Not long after I discovered Tress, I was soon introduced to the paintings and photographs of George Dureau. I was completely astonished by his compelling and provocative work, and when I went to New Orleans to meet him, and purchase some of his photography, I came across a remarkable human being, who ended up being my friend for over thirty years.
George was an enormous artistic presence in New Orleans. His work appears at landmarks throughout the city, such as a large bronze bust of Artemis in front of Harrah’s New Orleans Casino overlooking Canal Street, a Dureau-painted mural depicting mythic Mardi Gras across a wall at Gallier Hall, and cast-bronze nudes on the gates of the New Orleans Museum of Art.
George considered himself a painter even more than a photographer. He had a unique and innovative approach to his subjects in photography, which spoke volumes about the humanist he was at heart.
Dureau’s framing of his models allowed the observer to see more than just nudity. Mainly, he believed it allowed the observer a chance to gauge a sense of who the model was, rather than what they were capable of sexually.2
George mostly photographed three types of people: amputees, dwarves, and black men. Often these people were his friends—some were homeless; some even had hustler mentalities. Many were from a group that was not easily accepted in society, but George gave them that acceptance. One never felt like he exploited the people he photographed. George expressed what the scholar Charles Summers saw as “foremost a matter of empathy.”3
George would take on a lot of these guys as hired hands, feed them, and let them clean his house for money, though there were plenty of times he didn’t let this generosity go too far.
Whenever I went to New Orleans, I would go to Tommy’s Florist, get a big bouquet of Casablanca Lilies and walk over to George’s home. I also did that the very first time I met him.
That day, I was walking down Dauphine Street—it had rained that morning and the street was still dark and wet. As I approached George’s place, I saw a man standing outside and he kind of looked like Rasputin. He had crazy raven hair, a wild, unkempt beard and a butcher knife in his hand. He was swinging the knife in the air and yelling at a one-legged kid on crutches in front of his building.
“You cannot just show up here whenever you want!” he was screaming at the kid.
“But, Mr. George! Mr. George!” the kid cried. “My clothes are all wet!”
“That’s your problem!”
It was right then that he saw me.
“Who are you?” he said, eyeing me. “And what do you want?”
Holding my flowers out, I said, “George! I’m Michael Alago!’ and immediately his arms went up, butcher knife still in hand.
“Oh, my dear! Finally, we’re getting to meet! Please come inside!”
The kid then wandered off. I think George gave him a few bucks to get some food.
George and I went into his house. When he closed the door, we walked upstairs to the second floor and, as we did, I noticed a brown prosthetic leg with a shoe still on it on one of the steps. I asked, “George . . . who does that belong to?”
Very casually, as he headed toward the kitchen, he said, “Oh, we had a party last night.”
“Okay, uh, is that person still here?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “He wandered off somewhere in the middle of the night, but I’m sure he’ll come back for his leg.”
It was a circus whenever anyone visited George’s home. I was totally in love with his personality. He was a beautiful, down-to-earth man, and I was head over heels for his work.
Two of George’s muses were Troy Brown and BJ Robinson. George started photographing Troy in 1982, and he started working with BJ—a very handsome amputee, who also became a good friend of his—around the same time.
George shot many of the same models again and again. However, when he spoke about BJ and Troy, a very deep, personal affection and reverence for those two men came through.
[George] had a way of depicting his subjects (including amputees and dwarves) that was very frank but very evocative at the same time. . . . He did it in a way that made them seem powerful and heroic, which is not easy to do. He loved the male figure. Especially in his painting, he had a way of making his figures seem very mythological, like gods and centaurs, but at the same time it’s as if they stepped right out of Carnival.4
He also photographed Otis Battiste and Glen Thompson many, many times over the years. George was very close with both of them and had known them for a long time. They both had a tendency to be petty thieves. When they came to clean George’s loft from top to bottom to earn money, often Otis would go into George’s wallet and pants pocket and help himself to a little bit of extra cash. They were kind of harmless, but I found myself starting to keep an extra eye out for George.
There was a day—sometime in 2012—when I went to George’s house and saw him speaking to someone outside. I didn’t recognize this person as one of his models, so I asked what was going on, because I saw George handing a check over to this guy.
As I approached, and looked carefully at the guy, he said:
“George gave me some money.” I turned to George.
“George did you give some money to this guy?”
“Oh, I don’t remember Michael,” he said.
“Ok!” I said, I grabbed the check from the guy and ripped it in half.
“You’re no longer welcome here. I know your face, remember that,” I warned him.
The check had been made out for $1,000. I figured this guy was someone George had met on the street. He was like that—very generous of spirit—generous with his heart, with his time, and unfortunately, his money.
George and I went up into his studio and I saw hundreds of photographs thrown all over the floor. The place looked like a tornado had just hit. I knew right then and there I had to help him organize the place. Then when I looked closely at all the pictures, I noticed the edges appeared like they had been chewed up. I picked up a few and asked George:
“What’s wrong with all the edges of the photographs?”
“Oh, the mice love the silver gelatin on the prints,” he casually replied.
“George! This is your work, you can’t have mice eating the gelatin on the prints!”
There were big archival boxes in the corner of the studio. So, I made George some lunch, gave him a glass of white wine, then I started going through everything on the floor. I divided all of the photos into separate boxes, marking them—Dwarves, Amputees, Black Men—until I organized everything properly. I also let the Arthur Roger Gallery know what I was doing as they had represented George for over twenty-five years. At one point, though, he thought someone had stolen his pictures and I said, “George, we’ve been here all day! I put everything in boxes for you. Now, the mice won’t eat your prints.”
George’s studio was usually my first stop in New Orleans, and he always put out a wealth of food for me. Sometimes, I would go there for lunch then leave to take care of whatever business I had in New Orleans, then come back for dinner. We would eat and talk and drink, laughing until two in the morning. He also loved Nina Simone, whom I had known for a decade and with whom I had recently started working. I knew she was appearing at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, so I mentioned to George that I could bring her to his house.
“Michael! You’re really going to bring Nina Simone here?” he cried.
“Absolutely!” I insisted. “You love her and she’s going to love you and your pictures too! Everybody’s going to have a grand ole time!”
When I brought her to George’s, we sat on the veranda outside his home. George made Crawfish Étoufée and there were bottles and bottles of white wine. George ended up giving Nina a couple of large prints of nude black men, which she absolutely adored. It was a very special day for all of us.
The last time I saw George was June 3, 2013. By that time he was living at the Carrington Place of New Orleans, because he couldn’t take care of himself anymore. That was the first time I saw him when he wasn’t in his own home, so I knew our visit was going to be very, very different.
When I arrived at Carrington, I said to the front desk receptionist, “Hi, I’m Michael Alago, and I’m here to see Mr. Dureau.”
“Oh yes, of course,” the receptionist replied. “I believe his friend Katie said you were coming. He’s finishing getting dressed. Do you mind waiting?”
Katie Nachod was a good friend of George’s and always took excellent care of him.
I waited a few minutes before a nurse took me to see him.
He was fully shaved and in all the years that I knew him, I never saw him without a beard. His hair was in a pony tail and he was put together beautifully. I was comforted knowing this place was taking good care of him.
When I entered the room, I went up to him and I said, “Hi, George!”
“Who are you, young man?” he asked, looking at me with a puzzled expression.
“George! I’m Michael Alago from New York!”
“I know Michael Alago from New York and you are certainly not him!”
“But it is me, George!”
He looked at me, slightly annoyed.
I sat quietly with him for a few minutes, then I said, “Well, George, do you know how long you’ve been living here now?”
“No,” he informed me. “But there’s about to be a performance.”
“Who’s going to be performing?” I asked.
“You don’t worry about it,” he said. “But there’s going to be a performance.”
All that happened was that the other people in the Day Room started walking around, being unruly and out of control. They all had dementia. One woman kept coming over, running her hands over my head and saying that I had such nice hair. There was a table with a tic-tac-toe board on it and George wanted to play, which we did. They served lunch—if you want to call it lunch—and we ate together.
As I was leaving, he said to me, “Michael, it was very nice to see you today.” I smiled back at him and thought to myself—He remembered who I was.
When I left the building, I sat on the curb out front, and sobbed uncontrollably. I loved George so much. Thirty years of seeing this character who was beloved by everyone in New Orleans—his mind was going and it was tragic to watch.
George was a very proud man. Over the years, he rode his bicycle from home to the farmers market and back again. He did that ride like clockwork, even if he sometimes got lost. At those times, I would go out and search for him and when I found him, I would say, “Maybe you should walk the bike home with me?”
“No, you can walk, and I will meet you back at my home.” He was very independent—a brilliant, noble spirit.
He died in 2014, of advanced Alzheimer’s Disease.
In mid-2016, I got a call from the New Orleans Museum of Art. They wanted me to appear on a panel about George Dureau’s work. It was coinciding with the publication of a comprehensive book published by Aperture on George’s photography entitled George Dureau, The Photographs.5
Knowing that I wouldn’t be taking a scholarly approach to George and his work, I offered my personal stories about our friendship, which included the first time I met him, finding the prosthetic leg in his studio, his delicious cooking, and when I brought Nina Simone over to visit him. It ended up being a very successful discussion because people were really interested in all the stories, the world of George the human being, and how that charged his passion in photography.
George was born December 28, 1930, in New Orleans, and lived most of his life here. New Orleans was his spiritual as well as his physical home, and he embodied the carefree and bohemian aspects of his birthplace. He was well loved by all who knew him, and he was known by many. In addition to his amazing artistic talents, he was also a bon vivant and a raconteur par excellence. . . . He was nothing if not an egalitarian, comfortable with people from all walks of life.6