Nelly’s iconic images of dancing at the Acropolis

For non-Greek speakers, this video requires captioning. After clicking the video’s play button, hover your mouse cursor over the lower border of the video, then click on the ‘CC’ button to turn on English subtitles.

In this episode of the Benaki Museum’s CLOSE UPS video series, Aliki Tsirgialou, head of the Museum’s Photographic Archives, presents the notable Greek photographer Elli Souyioultzoglou-Seraidari – better known as Nelly – through images ranking her as one of the interwar period’s leading dance photographers.

Nelly was born in Asia Minor’s Aidini (now Aydın) in 1899. She studied photography in Germany under Hugo Erfurth and Franz Fiedler from 1920-21, before the 1922 expulsion of Greeks from Asia Minor by the Turks.

In 1924, she came to Greece, where she photographed important personalities of the time, including, as elaborated upon in the video, images of famous Opéra Comique ballerina Mona Païva, dancing nude at the Acropolis.

The Benaki Museum’s CLOSE UPS series presents the unique histories and people behind the works housed in its various collections.

View the original video here.

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