Nelly's

Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari (; 3 November 1899 – 8 August 1998), better known as Nelly's, was a Greek female photographer whose pictures of ancient Greek temples set against sea and sky backgrounds helped shaped the visual image of Greece in the Western mind (or, in a critical reading, the West's visual image of Greece in the Greek mind). There has been some confusion over how exactly she should be referred to. She adopted the diminutive "Nelly" for her professional society portrait work, and its genitive, "Nelly's", was incorporated in her decorative studio stamp, but at no time did she refer to herself as Nelly's; that version of her name was popularised by newspapers at the time of her rediscovery in the 1980s. She is now increasingly referred to, more correctly, as "Elli Seraidari".

Biography She was born in Aidini (now Aydın), near Smyrna (now İzmir), Asia Minor. which in retrospective views of her work goes largely unmentioned, as it fails to align with either any previous Greek stereotype or with the continuous developments in the photographic language of her contemporaries.

Returning to Greece and death She travelled to Greece, for a very short time, in 1949 and finally returned on 2 March 1966 and lived, together with her husband Angelos Seraidaris, at Nea Smyrni, Attica, and gave up photography.

In 1985, Nelly's donated her photo archives and cameras to the Benaki Museum in Athens, while in 1987 she was presented with an honorary diploma and medal by the Hellenic Centre of Photography and the government. In 1993, she was awarded the Order of the Phoenix by the president of the Greek Republic. In 1996, the Athens Academy presented her with its Arts and Letters Award.

Nelly's died in Nea Smyrni, Athens in 1998.

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