Abstract

When Nelly 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, while their work was 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 specializing in portraiture for expatriate families and Hellenocentric projects rather than capitalizing on the metropolis’ creative Zeitgeist.

In April 1956, Nelly attended photography seminars at Alexey Brodovitch’s Design Laboratory that 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 and embrace chance and technical accidents. Tasked with an assignment to illustrate the theme “Fantasy”, Nelly went to 5th Avenue during the popular Easter Parade. This paper seeks to contextualize the series Easter Parade in the visual cultures developing in New York in the 1950s and offer insights into how Nelly’s approached—albeit briefly—street photography.