Video: What became famous for the first Russian woman-photographer, who took pictures of the Tsar and Kshesinskaya: Forgotten Elena Mrozovskaya
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
"Where to know on frosted glass, including the Severyanin" - this is how the famous poet wrote about the mysterious "Mrozovskaya studio" on Nevsky Prospekt. The first woman in Russia who was engaged in professional photography, she captured writers and scientists, actresses and aristocrats in her photographs, she was admired by contemporary photographers, but nowadays she is almost forgotten …
Disappointing little is known about the life of this woman, who opened the way for Russian women to professional photography. Even the date of birth of Elena Lukinichna Mrozovskaya is unknown, only the year of death is 1941. Her uncle was the military governor-general of Moscow from 1915 to 1917, her brother was engaged in mechanics and art. Mrozovskaya began her career as an amateur photographer and was forced to earn her daily bread by doing other work. She worked as a saleswoman, then as a teacher, and no one in those years could have predicted her future glory. Her love of photography led her to take courses in photography at the Russian Technical Society, and then to a student with the photographer Felix Nadar … to Paris.
Mrozovskaya's life in Paris was not at all like a fairytale journey, life was difficult for her, but the passion for "photography", as photography was then called, overpowered all difficulties. Although Nadar at that time had already moved away from portrait photography and made a couple of creative revolutions, opening reporting and photo interview format, it was his early photographs that inspired Elena to find her own style. Returning to St. Petersburg, Mrozovskaya opened a photo studio at the Police Bridge. Ordinary people, pundits, and poets often went there - Mrozovskaya's enterprise developed rapidly, and her fame grew. Even Mendeleev himself and his students dropped in to see her.
Mrozovskaya often shot her clients in the then fashionable "neo-Russian" style (and her photographs resemble illustrations by Sergei Solomko or Ivan Bilibin). One of these works is a portrait of Countess M. E. Orlova-Davydova wearing a kokoshnik. This series of full-length and close-up photographs is now mistakenly used as illustrations for articles either about Russian emigration or about ancient Russian costume, but this is only a skillful stylization, and the photograph was taken in St. Petersburg. By the way, the similarity with the works of Russian illustrators of those years is no coincidence - Mrozovskaya was invited as a photographer to the Winter Palace, to shoot the legendary costume ball of 1903, for which Solomko created sketches of costumes. The colorized portrait of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich in Russian costume, made by Elena Lukinichna, is preserved, alive and spontaneous. She filmed the Grand Duke and with her family.
In the same rich outfit in the spirit of the "Russian seasons" Mrozovskaya photographed the famous ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya. Kshesinskaya seems to be "caught" in an instant dance movement, frozen for a moment. Although the shooting process at that time was difficult, and the clients of her studio had to sit for a long time in one position, Elena Lukinichna strove to give her work vividness, to convey the facial expressions and plasticity, the individuality of the portrayed. In this sense, Mrozovskaya's photographs are close to pictorialism - an attempt to give photography a pictorial effect of randomness, to bring photography closer to painting. Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, known today mainly for a series of color photographs of Russian villages, wrote about her as follows: “Mrozovskaya's work is based on the achievement of the transmission of living reality, which, like any truth, in any reproduction is closer to the human heart than an excellently worked out negative with the image of a dead frozen face. " Other critics - or rather, fans - spoke of Mrozovskaya's ability to work with a difficult nature, in dim daylight, during balls and celebrations …
She often filmed performances. A lot of stage footage of the famous actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya has survived. In addition, Elena Lukinichna performed many of her staged portraits.
And children. Children's portraits occupy a special place in Mrozovskaya's work. Unnamed kids look at the viewer from photographs with respect or mischief. They are often captured in moments of children's play. No frightened looks, no squeezed poses … It is in children's portraits that Mrozovskaya is revealed as a real artist, capable of "catching" human individuality.
Elena Mrozovskaya often took part in domestic and foreign photography exhibitions. Stockholm, Paris, Liege … Prize medals (almost never - gold, but bronze and silver - with enviable constancy), rave reviews, more and more high-ranking clients - such was the life of the first Russian woman-photographer at the peak of fame.
In the early 1900s, she became the official photographer of the St. Petersburg Conservatory and the Imperial Russian Musical Society. The interiors of the conservatory, filmed by Mrozovskaya on the days of its opening, are both cozy and solemn. These photographs, which have preserved for posterity the appearance of the early decoration of the conservatory, are considered the most important artifacts of the history of Russian photography, and Elena Lukinichna herself is sometimes called the pioneer of interior photography.
In 1913 the newspapers reported that Mrozovskaya's photo studio had become the “Women's Russian-Slavic art and photographic studio“Elena”. In the future, it was supposed to become part of the House of Women's Labor, but this never happened. Apparently, in 1920, Mrozovskaya's atelier was closed. After 1920, Mrozovskaya lived, presumably, in Vammelsuu (today the territory of the Kurortny district of St. Petersburg). Almost nothing is known about her life in the next twenty years. The surviving works of Elena Lukinichna are today in the Hermitage, in the collection of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, the Glinka Museum of Musical Culture, in the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art.
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