Edgar Degas studied photography and wanted to introduce the excitement of fleeting moments into his work. He spent hours sketching figures, especially ballerinas, then used those sketches to create compositions that appear like photographs in time. In works such as Fin d’arabesque and Blue Dancers, he cropped his paintings to closely focus on subjects like a camera lens zoomed in on a subject. Many of his paintings focus on unrehearsed gestures and facial expressions, which creates the look of a candid photograph. Many of his subjects, like the women in The Laundresses, don’t know they are being watched.