La puce, 1880? LSC.94/62
Jane Carpenter with assistance from Simon Elliott; machine-readable finding aid created by Caroline Cubé.
UCLA Library Special Collections
© 2013
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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."
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
.
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.
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[Identification of item], La puce (Collection 94/62). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library,
UCLA.
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UCLA Catalog Record ID:
9965138203606533
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.
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.