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.