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From the Studio to the Street: Re-interpreting Nelly’s series Easter Parade

Moschovi, Alexandra (2023) From the Studio to the Street: Re-interpreting Nelly’s series Easter Parade. In: Conference dedicated to the work of photographer Elli Souyoutzoglou-Seraidaris (Nelly’s), 13-14 May 2023, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece. (Submitted)

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

When Nelly's decided to stay in the United States at the onset of WWII, New York was rapidly transforming into the new cultural capital of the world. As millions of women were joining the workforce during wartime, the number of professional women photographers doubled in North America to 10,000, with their work gaining recognition through state commissions, publications, museum exhibitions, and the booming illustrated press. Although “Madame Nelly’s”, too, had received notable critical acclaim for her early exhibitions and displays of Greek subjects, financial pressures and the anguish of settlement forced her to concentrate her photographic energies on establishing a sustainable studio practice specialising on portraiture for expatriate families and Hellenocentric projects rather than capitalising on the metropolis’ creative Zeitgeist.

In the mid 1950s, Nelly's joined Alexey Brodovitch’s course “Visual Communications” at the New School for Social Research, which was advertised as geared towards the industry. There the Russian-born photographer, designer and art director of Harper’s Bazaar inspired the many attending photographers to experiment with new ideas and materials, urging them to use their cameras in an active way, to capture the flux of life in the streets, to embrace chance and technical accidents. Tasked with an assignment to illustrate “Phantasy”, Nelly's went to 5th Avenue during the popular Easter Parade. This short presentation seeks to contextualise Nelly’s series Easter Parade in the visual cultures developing in the city of New York in the 1950s, and offer insights into the ways these photographs have subsequently existed in different formats and contexts.

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More Information

Depositing User: Alexandra Moschovi

Identifiers

Item ID: 16040
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/16040
Official URL: https://www.benaki.org/index.php?option=com_events...

Users with ORCIDS

ORCID for Alexandra Moschovi: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-6101-3970

Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 11 May 2023 15:30
Last Modified: 11 Jul 2023 08:02

Contributors

Author: Alexandra Moschovi ORCID iD

University Divisions

Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries > School of Art and Design

Subjects

Fine Art > Art History
Photography > Photography
Photography

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