Directed and staged by the Countess, herself, and created in collaboration with the studio photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson, these “self-portraits” are some of the most extraordinary pictures in the history of photography, precursors to fashion photography and performative self-portraiture.

Today, we live in a world of selfies and social media: an Instagram world of constructed identities, performance, and disguise. But before all this, before super-models and influencers - 150 years ago - one of the most radical figures of the nineteenth century was pioneering new forms of fashion and conceptual photography: autofiction. In hundreds of portraits produced over a period of decades the Countess staged scenarios and performed different roles, to present different characters and personalities and to reflect multiple, fluid, unfixed identities.

Despite decades of activity, photographs by the Countess are incredibly rare as very few prints were made and she chose not to distribute. In fact, major exhibitions of her work only took place at the end of the 20th century at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris in 1999 and then at the Metropolitan Museum, New York in 2000. Most of her work is now in the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum.

The portraits come from three main periods: 1856–57, 1861–67, and 1893–95, taking us on a journey from the Countess in her prime – costumed and fetishised as the most beautiful woman of her age, through images in which she attempted to reclaim former triumphs, to emotionally charged late images which suggest not just the fading of her beauty but also psychological trauma. After the glamourous masquerades of her early photographs, these harrowing later pictures provide a devastating portrayal of loss and ageing.