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Nude on the Parthenon: Nelly’s Daring Photos Banned by Facebook

Nelly's Parthenon
Her avant-garde pictures of nude Mona Paeva on the Parthenon were published in the French magazine Illustration de Paris. Credit: Benaki Museum

Nelly (1899 – 1998) was a Greek female photographer and the first artist to photograph a nude dancer on the Acropolis. Her pictures of ancient Greek temples set against sea and sky backgrounds helped shape the visual image of Greece in the Western mind.

She was also the first photographer in Greece to publish a color photograph and created the Greek Tourism Organization’s first-ever promotional poster.

Her real name was Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari, and she was born in 1899 Aydin, Asia Minor. She studied photography in Germany, near the great classic photographer Hugo Erfurt and later, with Franz Fiedler, she was initiated into the new approach in photography and the European Neο-Romanticism.

Nelly’s photographs on the Parthenon cause a stir

She opened her first studio at Ermou Street in Athens in 1924 and her lens captured important personalities and themes of that time, such as the famous dancer of Opera Comique Mona Paeva dancing nude in the Parthenon, the Delphic Festival and Eva Sikelianou, Dimitris Mitropoulos, principal conductor of the Metropolitan Opera of New York.

Nelly's
Nelly’s captures the scene at the Delphic Festival in 1930. Credit: Benaki Museum

Nelly’s avant-garde pictures of nude Mona Paeva on the Parthenon were published in the French magazine Illustration de Paris and caused a scandal in Athens at that time.

During the shoot in 1927, Nelly relates that she was so enchanted by the beauty of the dancer’s body in the Greek light that she asked Paeva if she could photograph her in the nude, and the dancer consented.

Once published, the images were condemned by the Greek press, which described them as “provocative profanity on the sacred monument.” In response to this backlash, writer Pavlos Nirvanas published an open letter in the “Elefthero Vima” newspaper reminding the public that to ancient Greeks, the naked body represented the supreme expression of truth and was the embodiment of the classical ideal.

Decades later the nude photos on the Acropolis continue to cause controversy.

In 2017 Facebook decided that one of her emblematic photos on the Acropolis was inappropriate, and banned it. The victim of this surreal censorship was the Hellenic Museum of Melbourne which posted the photo to advertise an exhibition of her works.

Nelly's
Her admiration of Ancient Greek civilization contributed to her photographic work at the Acropolis. Credit: Benaki Museum

Her classical education and admiration of Ancient Greek civilization contributed to her photographic work at the Acropolis in a way that the latter has become decisive for the artist and also for the history of photography and architecture.

In her portraits Nelly uses artificial light, leaving one part of the form in the dark, while the background remains empty, as a reference to the Great Masters of the Renaissance.

The aim of this work was the search for the spiritual element, the poetic atmosphere and the demonstration of the form’s most profound essence.

During World War II, she went to the United States, where she stayed for 27 years and The Metropolitan Museum of New York bought a large series of her Acropolis photographs.

In 1966 she returned to Greece and presented her work in numerous exhibitions.

In 1984, Nelly donated her life’s work, in the form of 50,000 negatives and 20,000 prints to the Benaki Museum, together with archival materials, film reels, and personal belongings such as her cameras, darkroom equipment, and even beautiful porcelain items that she painted and sold in New York.

She died in Nea Smyrni, Athens in 1998.

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