Elena Mrozovskaya

Mrozovskaya's ex-husband,^[3] Bronislav (after accepting orthodoxy in 1904 - Vladimir) Pavlovich Mrozovsky, was a mechanical engineer and painter, and his uncle (possible),^[4] Iosif Ivanovich Mrozovsky [ru], became the military governor-general of Moscow from 1915 to 1917.^[5] Mrozovskaya herself was originally a teacher and sales clerk. She studied photography at the Russian Technical Society, finishing in 1892, and then continued her studies with Nadar in Paris.^[1][2] Returning to St. Petersburg, she opened a studio there in 1894.^[1][2] In the 1920s, she was living in Serovo, a district of St. Petersburg. She died in 1941 in Repino, another district of St. Petersburg.^[6]

Mrozovskaya's subjects included Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov,^[2] Mathilde Kschessinska,^[5] Vera Komissarzhevskaya, and other artists, writers, and actors of the time.^[1] Her photos of the interior of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, taken beginning in 1896, are among the earliest recordings of the conservatory, and in 1897 she was named its official photographer.^[2] She won a bronze medal at the General Art and Industrial Exposition of Stockholm (1897) and a silver medal at the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris, and participated as well in the Liège International (1905).^[1][2]