George Valentine Dureau (1930–2014, New Orleans, LA) was an artist known primarily for his charcoal works on paper and black and white photographs. His prolific body of work often represented people on the margins of Southern society, many of them Black or disabled, and explored expressions of masculinity. He was a friend and mentor to Robert Mapplethorpe as well as an inspiration to future generations of photographers. Dureau’s works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Portland Art Museum, OR; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX.