Photograph of Eleonora Mamelok (?)

The photograph was believed to be that of Halina, née Baruch Mamelok, mother of Józef Mamelok, who described the photograph. She is sitting in a black, probably satin, voluminous dress with a white collar; her hair is pinned up. She is looking straight into the camera. The background behind the woman is not typically office-like, instead of natural - a living room? Visible in the background is a framed painting hanging on the wall, with a chair below it. Halina of Baruch's assumption that the photograph depicts her husband's mother seems justified, as the woman at the moment of taking the photograph was much older than the one depicted on another photograph (jointly with her husband Bolesław Mamelok, MPOLIN-A25.1.44). However, the faces on both images are similar.

A severe reservation concerning the dating and authorship of the photograph should be noted. The photograph is affixed to the original company's cardboard box with the photographer's logo embossed in gold on the obverse and printed on the reverse. The atelier had been in operation since the turn of the first and second decades of the 20th century (moreover, due to the address of the atelier indicated in the company print on the reverse - Wrocławska Street - dating the creation of the photograph could be narrowed down to 1914-1918 because it was probably then that the atelier operated in this street). However, Eleonora Mamelok, Bolesław (Baruch) Mamelok's wife, had been dead for many years since 1897. We are sure that she did not die later: the marriage certificate, from which we know that she was the daughter of Joachim and Dorota Kempiński, has survived, as has the death certificate from Częstochowa (cited in the note to a photograph earlier in the collection); another Eleonora Mamelok lived in the area at the same time (she married Michał Ludwik Mamelok in Praszka in 1859! at the age of 88, and was buried in the Kromołów cemetery (as stated in the obituary of the Kurier Warszawski [Warsaw Couirier] 1917, no. 223, p. 3). However, she was Eleonora Mamelok - nee Mamelok. She may have been related to Bolesław Mamelok, but certainly not his wife. Eleonora Mamelok is depicted in this photograph? The family could have had a glass negative of her likeness from the last years and made a print about twenty years after her death (also after Bolesław died in 1910).The availability of such a negative is all the more probable as the photograph was probably not taken in an atelier, as mentioned at the beginning of the description. The background seems natural - as if it was the interior of a house. Probably it was the photographed woman's house. As the photograph is both posed (the body, the carefully dressed) and extremely carefully taken (the lighting and the clarity of various details of the figure draw our attention), we can presume that it was taken by a professional photographer who was specially commissioned and came to the owners' house. The service, which was exceptionally expensive at the end of the 19th century, could have involved handing over a negative, which the family used years later (during World War I) to make a print in Kalisz.

However, this is only a hypothesis. After all, Halina of Baruch could have been mistaken (which she assumes in her description, emphasizing the supposition), and the photograph could simply depict another member of her husband's family - the Mameloks from Kalisz. There were quite a few people of that surname living there. It is symptomatic that a well-known journalist of the local press was Eliasz Jakub Mamelok. Among other things, he worked for the periodical Kaliszer Leben, published in the early 1930s, and signed himself Elim), and in Nowe Skalmierzyce, near Kalisz, there was a prestigious Mamelok hotel (at present, the building is one of the most important historic buildings in Kalisz and the surrounding area).

PK