The photographic collection dedicated to prisons by Henri Manuel is exceptional for discovering the prisons of the era through images. "Through this presentation of this photographic holdings I propose to go beyond the images and, through their analysis, to approach what daily prison life could have been at that time, in order to better grasp what is told to us about this reality. Photographs that allow us to look at the carceral world of the 1930s and that shed light on the meaning given to punishment."
Fabienne Huard-Hardy, historian, is currently head of the Centre de ressources sur l'histoire des crimes et des peines at the École nationale d'administration pénitentiaire. In 2017 she published Le manuel des prisons. Regards sur des prisons de l'entre-deux-guerres with Presses de l'Enap.