A l'encre bleue. Retrouver l'histoire des femmes tatouées dans les archives des prisons françaises (1881-1950)

Jeanne Barnicaud will share his ongoing research on the practices and imagination of female tattooing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This work aims to restore the nuances of a form of expression (or even, sometimes, art) that, contrary to popular belief, has not been limited to sailors, soldiers, prisoners and prostitutes. An in-depth analysis of scientific studies, press articles, and nut registers suggests a much broader adoption of this mode of self-expression. Female tattooing was practiced to improve appearance, adopt counter-cultural codes and assert identity. If it has sometimes been suffered or suggested, it has also been an opportunity to voluntarily express one’s individuality.

Jeanne Barnicaud is a teacher-researcher and doctoral student at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

The Committee of History of the Ville de Paris, the association History and lives of the 10th and the médiathèque Françoise Sagan offer you a series of conferences on the theme of detention, in order to complete, enrich and expand the subject of the exhibition Prisoners, the last years of the prison Saint-Lazare (1919-1932) presented at the media library.