Just a few days ago I wrote this blog about a Polish Art Deco painter called Tamara de Lempicka. Especially interesting was a portrait of her taken by Vienna-born photographer Dora Kallmus. She was such a successful fashion photographer who also shot the celebrities of her time that in 1924 she opened a studio in Paris. It was there that she took the famous portrait of de Lempicka.

By strange coincidence I noticed an interesting old photograph at the Biblioteca Nacional Argentina where my friend RobertoBaschetti works. I was in Buenos Aires in April. The old photograph had an almost illegible signature which I was able to decipher to "Madame d'Ora.”

When I wrote the de Lempicka blog I did some research on Kallmus and I found out (!!) that for her Paris studio she used the name Madame d’Ora as her professional pseudonym. There is no record of Kallmus having visited Argentina. She died in Austria in 1963. Perhaps the photograph came from an art collection. Baschetti's job is to go through book collections that are being donated to the library. He told me that he found the loose photograph between the pages of a Chilean translation of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.