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Puce photographic album
LSC.94/62  
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Table of contents What's This?
  • Restrictions on Access
  • Restrictions on Use and Reproduction
  • Preferred Citation
  • Processing Information
  • UCLA Catalog Record ID
  • Scope and Content
  • Related Material

  • Contributing Institution: UCLA Library Special Collections
    Title: La puce
    Identifier/Call Number: LSC.94/62
    Physical Description: 1 albums (20 photographic prints) : albumen, 15 x 21 cm (album)

    Photographs (12 x 17 cm) are affixed to rectos and versos of leaves of heavy beige stock, bordered in red.

    Bound in red cloth covers, with title "La puce" stamped in gold on upper cover; gold moiré silk endpapers; all edges gilt. Gift of Frederic Thomas Blanchard.

    Spec. Coll. copy: in modern beige cloth-covered clamshell box, with spine title "La puce."
    Date (inclusive): 1880? Date from ms. note on verso of rear endpaper.
    Abstract: Album, probably created in France in 1880, of twenty erotic photographs of a young woman inspecting herself for fleas, whose actions are intended primarily to titillate.
    Physical Location: Stored off-site at SRLF. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. Please contact UCLA Library Special Collections for paging information.
    Language of Material: English .

    Restrictions on Access

    Open for research. STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. Please contact UCLA Library Special Collections for paging information.

    Restrictions on Use and Reproduction

    Property rights to the physical object belong to the UC Regents. Literary rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.

    Preferred Citation

    [Identification of item], La puce (Collection 94/62). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

    Processing Information

    Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.
    We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Potentially Offensive Description in Library Special Collections.  

    UCLA Catalog Record ID

    UCLA Catalog Record ID: 9965138203606533 

    Scope and Content

    The first six photographs show the young woman, dressed in long-sleeved Victorian blouse and skirt, seated on a lavisly draped couch beneath a large mirror, in which the viewer can see her reflection. She reads, then falls asleep. The remaining fourteen photos reveal the young woman gradually undressing, presumably to locate the flea ("la puce") that is biting her. First she removes her blouse, then her stockings, finally her skirt. She holds aloft the offending insect in the final photo. See the chapter "Sexual connotations of the flea in word and image" in Georges de la Tour's "Flea-Catcher" and the iconography of the flea-hunt in seventeenth-century baroque art / Crissy Bergeron, available online.

    Related Material

    Part of the Photograph Album Collection (Collection 94)   in UCLA Library Special Collections.

    Subjects and Indexing Terms

    Albumen prints.
    Photograph albums.
    Photographic prints.
    Fleas -- Symbolic aspects -- Photographs.
    Erotica.
    Blanchard, Frederic T. (Frederic Thomas), b. 1878, former owner.