George Dureau, The Photographs is an album of the great photographic portraits made throughout the forty years of Dureau's artistic career-a New Orleans romance between the photographer and his subjects.

This album of photographic portraits by New Orleans artist George Dureau (1930-2014), charts his forty-year romance with the male figure as subject. Dureaüs photographs of men are described by Philip Gefter in his introductions as clear-eyed, humble, and sincere; whether clothed or nude, they appear natural and unself-conscious before his camera. He portrayed his models, many of whom were black, disabled, or both, with a tender regard—his gaze steady and tinged with a playful eroticism—their poses evoking classical figures of allegory and myth. Well-known among his contemporaries, and famously influencing the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, this is the first collection of his photographs to be published since 1985.
Philip Gefter is the author of Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe (2014), and the essay collection Photography After Frank (Aperture, 2009).