Nelly's

Nelly's was not the first to photograph nudes. At that time there were many photographers (outside Greece) who used nudes in their work. No one, however, had dared to pose his nudes in a taboo setting, in a setting symbolic of an entire civilization. But Nelly's nudes, quite apart from their perfection as photographs, are remarkable for an inner quality which, in contrast to the massive sculptures, the "plasticity" of the light and the serenity of the ruins, enhances all the spirituality of the ancient classical ideal as it is expressed in the naked human body.

From the Acropolis nudes...

From the Acropolis nudes...
Thus, "The Acropolis nudes" altered people's perception of and attitude towards the naked body. It was not long before major Greek painters of the 1930's were posing nudes in natural settings, in an early attempt to associate landscape with the aesthetics and the ideals of the period.

For Nelly's, the Sacred Rock of the Acropolis has always been a favorite subject and a source of inspiration. The Parthenon and the other ancient monuments constitute however more than just a setting, the backdrop against which the body moves. They form in themselves a major chapter in her photographic oeuvre. Her love for the ancient Greece which nourished her youth, her familiarity with the ruins in Asia Minor, her contact with Germany and its neo-classical architecture, her memories of her childhood years, her up-bringing and education, all conspired to orient her, with unforced naturalness, in the direction of a photographic recording of ancient Greek monuments. The invitation to become the official photographer of the Ministry of Tourism facilitated this work of documentation considerably. Nelly's photographed ancient Greek monuments with tremendous love and with penetrating acuity. This is perhaps the outstanding feature of her work, which we do not hesitate to label as innovative, less indeed for its content or technique than for its manner of treating its subjects.

Nelly's artistic identity seems to confirm the timeliness of a question that was frequently posed at that time: Can one be both modern and classic at the same time? Nelly's modernity moves within the framework of the extended 19th century, in the sense that, despite her use of ultra - modern (for the period) cameras and techniques (duxochrome, Zeiss, Contax, Leica), aesthetically and thematically her art is heavily influenced by the atmosphere and the artistic trends of turn of the century and pre-(first) war Germany.

From the Acropolis nudes...

This however does not mean that she remains "attached" to a, by then, sterile academicism or an out-moded aesthetic. Nelly's exploits both technical progress and her restless, inquisitive intellect to explore a territory which preserves certain characteristics of the 19th century, features with awaken an echo in her temperament and her concept of beauty. Thus, elements such as lyricism (let us not forget that Nelly's initial fields of study were painting and music), references to ancient civilizations, praise of nature and the re-integration of man into nature, all found in Nelly's not only a sensitive receptor but an artist capable of perceiving them as healthy and unequaled values and incorporating them into her art.

Katerina Koskina

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