[Self-Portrait with Zoé Closier]

[Self-Portrait with Zoé Closier] by Edgar Degas, created around 1895, is a significant and intimate example of the artist’s deep involvement with the camera during his late career. Though celebrated for his Impressionist paintings and sculptures, Degas frequently used photography for private studies and artistic experimentation during the 1890s. This piece is a gelatin silver print, a medium that allowed the artist to manipulate light and shadow with striking results, often emphasizing the medium's inherent tonal depth.

The work functions as a dual study, combining the classification of Self-portraits with the portrayal of another individual. Degas, classified here within the subject category of Men, appears in the foreground, often partially obscured or captured in a moment of movement. He contrasts sharply with the other subject, Zoé Closier, a female figure identified as a laundress or model from the artist's studio circle, representing the category of Women. Unlike his carefully studied compositions in oil, this photographic exploration relies on dramatic, internalized illumination and close cropping, lending the work an immediacy and psychological intensity.

Degas often treated these photographic prints as unique, non-reproducible objects, and this self-portrait provides crucial documentation of his revolutionary approach to light and composition outside the realm of traditional drawing. This singular impression of the artist’s photographic experimentation resides today in the respected collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.