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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
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UCLA Catalog Record ID
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
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Albumen prints.
Photograph albums.
Photographic prints.
Fleas -- Symbolic aspects -- Photographs.
Erotica.
Blanchard, Frederic T. (Frederic Thomas), b. 1878, former owner.