Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari

The Photography of Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari

Born in 1899 at the Vilayhet of Aidin (Aydini), an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire, Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari was a Greek photographer whose work helped shape the image of Greece to Western culture. She was the first Greek photographer to export modern images of Greece abroad and thus influenced the future of Greek tourism. Later known by the pseudonym Nelly for her professional society portraiture, Elli Seraidari drew attention to Greece during the country’s turbulent interwar years, a period from 1918 to 1939 that resulted in economic, social, political, and military changes..

At the beginning of the Greco-Turkish War, the Aidini Massacre in the summer of 1919 uprooted Elli Seraidari’s family from their home and forced them to flee to the city of Smyrna. Seraidari relocated in 1920 with her brother to the German city of Dresden where they planned to study the arts. For two years, she studied photography under Franz Fiedler, known for his surrealist-inspired images, and Hugo Erfurth, a portraitist of early twentieth-century celebrities and cultural figures.

After the creation of the Grand National Assembly in the Ottoman Empire led by Mustafa Demal Atatürk, a campaign against the indigenous Greek and Christian populations began. The brutal persecution and destruction led to massacres, forced deportations, executions, and the destruction of cultural and religious monuments. The Great Fire of Smyrna in September of 1922, a deliberate act by the government, forced the city’s population to flee from the Turkish military forces and seek shelter in Greece and elsewhere. Although Seraidari was abroad at the time, she joined the hundred of thousands refugees who were seeking a new life in Greece

In the spring of 1924, Elli Seraidari relocated to Athens where she made the bold decision to establish a photography studio in the high-rent center of the city. Seraidari used her equipment from Dresden to produce specialized portraits as well as dance and nude photography. Her portrait work soon became status symbols for the culturally elite in Greece. Seraidari’s introduction of models and performers into images of the national treasures of the Greek landscape created a new narrative for the growing nation and increased Seraidari’s reputation. Among her most notable works of this early period are the 1925 nude portrait of prima ballerina Mona Paeva and the 1930 mid-air image of Russian dancer Elizaveta Nikolska, both taken at the Parthenon.

Elli Seraidari adopted a naive nationalistic and conservative approach to her work. Her style coincided with Greece’s need to produce an ideal view of the country and its people, both for internal and tourism purposes. Seraidari was appointed as an official photographer for the newly established Greek Ministry of Tourism. She also was commissioned by the Greek Archeological Service to photograph Greek antiquities, both architecture and sculpture. Seraidari’s creative eye imbued the images with a dramatic use of light and dark shadows, sharp horizontal and vertical lines, and camera angles that brought life to the subjects.

Seraidari’s association with Greece’s Fourth of August Regime, under the leadership of General Ioannis Metaxas, made her one of the country’s most prolific photographers. As a refugee in Greece, Seraidari’s view of Greece was idyllic. This matched the propaganda of the Metaxas regime to illustrate the continuity of the Greeks since Antiquity. Now a well-established artist, Seraidari photographed the events and athletes at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Three years later, she was commissioned with the decoration of the Greek pavilion at the New York’s World Fair, for which Seraidari created gigantic collages that expressed the similarities between ancient and modern Greeks.

While in New York, Elli Seraidari decided to remain in the United States, establish her commercial photographic portraiture, and seek new work in the fields of photo reportage and advertising. She continued to maintain her connections with the Greek elite, including shipping tycoons Aristotle Onassis and Stavos Niachos, and soon developed contacts in the White House. As her new work failed to align with any previous Greek stereotype, viewings of her work in the United States went largely unmentioned.

After several excursions to Greece beginning in 1949, Seraidari returned to Greece in March of 1966 where she settled with her husband at Nea Smyrni, a municipality in South Athens, and ceased her photographic work. In 1985, Seraidari donated her photo archives and cameras to Athen’s Beanaki Museum. The Greek government and the Hellenic Center of Photography awarded her in 1987 with an honorary diploma and medal. In 1993, Seraidari received the Order of the Phoenix, an award for those in Greece who have excelled in the arts and sciences. This award was followed in 1996 by the Athens Academy’s Arts and Letters Award. Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari died in Nea Smyrni on the eighth day of August in 1998 at the age of ninety-seven.

Notes: The “Daily Art” has an article on Elli Seraidari’s work entitled “The Queen of Neoclassical Photography: Nelly” at its March 2024 edition: https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/greek-photographer-nelly/

Projects at Harvard has an article on the opposing photographic styles of two artists, British photographer Francis Firth and Elli Seraidari, both of whom shot images of the Acropolis and Parthenon: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/sites/projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/whoseculture/files/nelly_frith_photography_dpenizzotto_oct_7_21.pdf

The “Greece Is” newsletter has a July 2023 article on Elli Seraidari’s work entitled “Nelly’s: Setting the Image of Greece in the Mind of the World” which coincided with a major exhibition of her work at the Pireos 138 Benaki Museum: https://www.greece-is.com/nellys-setting-the-image-of-greece-in-the-mind-of-the-world/

The Benaki Museum has a lecture on Elli Seraidari’s life and her photography on YouTube under the title “Nelly’s: Reflections on the Life and Work of the Greek Photographer Elli Seraidari-Sougioultzoglou”.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari”, circa 1920s, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Elli Sougloultzoglou-Seraidari, “Temple de la Victoire Aptere, Athens”, 1925, Gelatin Silver Print, Banaki Museum Photographic Archives

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Elli Sougioultzoglou-Seraidari”, Gelatin Silver Print, Impactalk Online Magazine

Bottom Insert Image: Elli Sougloultzoglou-Seraidari, “Demetrius Karambatis on the Acropolis”, 1925, Gelatin Silver Print, Banaki Museum Photographic Archives

Hervé Guibert

The Photography of Hervé Guibert

Born at Saint-Cloud, Hauts-de-Seine on the fourteenth of December in 1955, Hervé Guibert was a French author and photographer. The author of two-dozen published works, he wrote with aggressive candor, detachment, and passion through a mixture of diary writing, memoir, and fiction. Both his writings and photography were closely linked to his private life. The subjects of Guibert’s writings often became his friends; those whom he loved were often portrayed as celebrities, alternately idolized and exposed.

Guibert’s photographic oeuvre contains interior scenes and landscapes as well as portraits of family, friends and lovers. He worked in black and white with tones drawn to soft grays. Photographs of Guibert’s immediate surroundings, his bookcase or desk, were created with the same intensity as photographs of nudes in his bed. His work is both restrained and subtle, created more for his person or close friends rather than public exposure. Although most of his work remains elusive, never having been exhibited or published, those images that have appeared are cool, confident and emotionally warm.

Hervé Guibert was born into a conservative middle-class family of a veterinary inspector and his wife, a former teacher. He relocated to Paris at the age of seventeen with the hope of becoming an actor or scriptwriter. After his rejection from a Paris film school, Guibert entered the literary world and, by the age of twenty, was writing dating advice for “20 Ans (Twenty Years)”, a glossy women’s magazine. In 1977, he published his autobiographical novel, “La Mort Propagande (Death Propaganda)”.

In 1978, Guibert was hired as a photography critic for France’s evening newspaper “Le Monde”. He successfully established himself as a photographer with a photographic literary volume, “Suzanne and Louise”, containing intimate portraits of his great-aunts. In 1981, Hervé Guibert published his “Image Fantôme (Ghost Image)”, an insightful collection of mini-essays on various photographic forms such as family album portraits, photo-booth film strips, and pornographic Polaroids. In this work, Guibert presented photography as tactile, fetishistic and linked to frustrated desires.

In 1982, Hervé Guibert completed his “Les Aventures Singulières (The Singular Adventures)”. This collection of short stories, published through Éditions de Minuit in Paris, centered on a singular character’s life over a period of three years. He shared the Best Screenplay César Award in 1984 for a collaborative work with opera and theater director Patrice Chéreau on the 1983 film “L’Homme Blessé (The Wounded Man)”.

Guibert was granted in 1987 a two year residency scholarship at Villa Medicis, the site of the French Academy in Rome, where he studied with his friend, the openly gay writer and journalist Mathieu Lindon. In January of 1988, Guibert received a positive diagnosis for AIDS and began to record in his writings what would be the remainder of his life. He was the long-time friend of both Christine and her partner, film director Thierry Jouno, considered the man in Guibert’s life. Guibert married Christine to ensure that his royalty income would pass to her and her two children with Jouno.

In 1989, Hervé Guibert published his highly erotic novella ““Fou de Vincent (Crazy for Vincent)”, a dramatization of his earlier intermittent relationship with the impulsive and unpredictable teenager Vincent Marmousez. He revealed his HIV status in his 1990 real-life based novel “À l’Ami qui ne M’a Pas Sauvé la Vie (To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life)”. Following the release of this novel, Guibert became the focus of media attention with interviews and several talk show appearances.

Guibert’s last work, “Cytomégalovirus” was a description of his autumn 1991 hospitalization and the increasing blindness he suffered from his illness. In the second week of December in 1991, Guibert attempted suicide by taking digitalin, a heart medication toxic in large doses. Two weeks later, he died at the age of thirty-six in Clamart, Hauts-de-Seine, on the twenty-seventh of December in 1991.

Notes: An excellent article on Hervé Guibert’s 1981 essay volume “Ghost Image” can be found on British photographer Felix Pilgrim’s site: https://www.felixpilgrim.com/blog-1/herve-guiberts-ghost-image

The contemporary Vienna gallery Felix Gaudlitz, in collaboration with Attilia Fattori Franchini, organized a 2020 exhibition of Hervé Guibert’s photographic work entitled “…of lovers, time, and death”. The gallery’s article with several of Guibert’s photographs can be found at: https://felixgaudlitz.com/exhibitions/herve-guibert-of-lovers-time-and-death/

Information written by Christine (Guibert) on Hervé Guibert’s partner Thierry Joune and the impact he had on Guibert’s writings can be found at: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/281395860/thierry-jouno

A more extensive biographical article on Hervé Guibert, with additional links, can be found in this blog’s November 2024 archive: https://ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon.blog/2024/11/18/hevre-guibert-he-who-wished-to-be-master-of-the-truth/

Top Insert Image: Hervé Guibert, “Self Portrait”, 1985, Gelatin Silver Print, 23.7 x 30.2 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Hans Georg Berger, “Hervé Guibert and Poet Eugène Savitzkaya, New Year’s Eve, Rio nell’Elba, Italy”, 1984, Gelatin Silver Print, Semiotext(e)

Third Insert Image: Hervé Guibert, “Christine”, 1983, Gelatin Silver Print, 23.8 x 30.5 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Hans Georg Berger, “Hervé Guibert and Thierry Juono, Hotel Gellért, Gesellschaft”, 1983, Gelatin Silver Print

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau: Film History Series

F. W. Murnau, “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror”, 1922, Film Scene Gifs, Cinematography Fritz Arno Wagner and Günther Krampf (Uncredited), Premiere Music Score Hans Erdmann, Prana Film

Born in Bielefeld, a city near the Teutoburg Forest in December of 1888, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was a German film director, producer and screenwriter. Recognized as one of the most influential filmmakers of the silent era, he achieved international recognition for his 1922 film “Nosferatu”, an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic horror novel “Dracula”.

Born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe to Otilie Volbracht and Heinrich Plumpe, the owner of a cloth factory, Murnau was one of four children raised in a wealthy family of the northwest part of Germany. By the age of twelve, Friedrich had already read works by Henrik Johan Ibsen, Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer and Shakespeare. He studied philology, the study of language in oral and written historical sources, at the University of Berlin and later art history and literature at the University of Heidelberg.

Noticed for his acting ability in university performances, Friedrich was invited in 1908 by film and theater director Max Reinhard to attend his drama school. It was during this period that he changed his name to Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, as his parents did not accept either his homosexuality or his choice of a career in the theater. While studying at Reinhard’s school, Murnau met and began a relationship with the poet, writer and musician Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele. It was Ehrenbaum who introduced Murnau to the work of such Expressionists as painter Franz Marc and Else Lasker-Schüler, a writer of plays, poetry and prose.

In addition to his acting in several of Reinhardt’s plays, F. W. Murnau’s experience with film making began with his position as Reinhardt’s assistant on the production of the 1912 silent “The Miracle”, a full-color film experience that included a full- sized symphony orchestra and chorus. During World War I, Murnau fought in the infantry on the Eastern front and, beginning in 1916, served as a member of the Imperial German Flying Corps. He survived several missions over France and eight crashes without serious injuries. Murnau was detained in neutral Switzerland in 1917 until the end of the war. His friend and lover, Hans Ehrenbaum served in the war as an infantry soldier but was killed on the Eastern front in 1915, an event which had a profound effect on Murnau.

After the war, Murnau returned to Germany and, in 1919, entered into a collaboration with actor Conrad Veidt to establish a film studio. His directorial debut, now considered a lost film, was the 1919 feature-length drama “Der Knabe in Blau (The Boy in Blue)” inspired by Gainsborough’s 1770 painting of the same name and Oscar Wilde’s novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. Between 1919 and 1922, Murnau created films on a variety of topics and in a variety of styles. An Expressionist film of this period, now lost, was Murnau’s fourth feature film, the 1920 “Der Janus Kopf (The Head of Janus)“. This was a variation on Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella “Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and starred Conrad Veidt and Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi.

F. W. Murnau’s best known film is the 1922 “Nosferatu”, an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” that was produced through his newly founded Prana Film Company. This film was the only one released by the company due to a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Florence Stoker, Bram Stoker’s widow. In its judgement, the court ordered all existing copies destroyed; only one copy of “Nosferatu” survived and became the basis of all prints existing today. Working alongside cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner, Murnau created macabre visual effects for the film that included negative images of trees against a black sky, stop-motion movements, and projected shadows.

Murnau’s collaboration with scriptwriter Carl Mayer and cinematographer Karl Freund resulted in the 1924 “Der Letzte Mann (The Last Man)”, starring Emil Jennings in his best known role. This film, nearly as important as “Nosferatu”, established Murnau’s reputation as one of the foremost German directors. Mounted cameras on bicycles and overhead wires created a rapid series of subjective images; the entire film was pantomime with only one title card used in the entire seventy-seven minute silent film. Murnau’s final two films produced in Germany were the 1925 “Herr Tartüff (Tartuffe)”, an adaptation of Molière’s satiric play, and “Faust”, a silent 1926 fantasy film that starred Emil Jennings as Mephisto and Gösta Ekman as Faust.

Acquiring a contract in the United States with Fox Film Corporation in 1926, F. W. Murnau and his staff of German technicians and craftsman produced the 1927 “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” which won several Oscars and Janet Gaynor her first Academy Award for Best Actress. The film shared what is now the Best Picture Award with William A Wellman’s “Wings” and was held by critics as the finest silent film ever produced by a Hollywood studio. Murnau did two more films for Fox Film Corporation: the 1928 “Four Devils”, now considered a lost film, and the 1929 “Our Daily Bread” to which Fox Film in an attempt to be more current hastily added spoken dialogue to the silent scenes, essentially compromising Murnau’s vision.

In 1928, Murnau formed a film production company with documentary film maker Robert Flaherty in order to better control the content of his films. They traveled to the Tahiti in 1929 to film “Tabu”. Flaherty withdrew from the project in its early stages when Murnau began incorporating a fictionalized love story into what had started as an objective documentary of Polynesian life. Finished at Murnau’s own expense and released in 1931, “Tabu: A Story of the South Seas” was a synchronized sound film split into two chapters with a music score and sound effects. “Tabu” became Murnau’s most popular and successful film. Deep in debt, he was offered a ten-year contract with Paramount Studios upon his return to Hollywood.

On the tenth of March in 1931, one week prior to the premiere of “Tabu”, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was driven up the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles in a rented Packard touring car by his young Filipino driver Eliazar Stevenson. The fast-driven car swerved to avoid a truck that unexpectedly veered into the northbound lane. After striking an embankment, Murnau and Stevenson were thrown out of the vehicle. Murnau suffered a fractured skull and died in the hospital the next day. His body was transported to Germany and entombed in the Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery near Berlin on the thirteenth of April.

Notes: An excellent biographical article on F. W. Murnau’s life can be found at the CineCollage site: http://cinecollage.net/murnau.html

A 1967 article, “Shadow and Substance: F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu”, written by Gilberto Perez Guillermo for the Sight and Sound Archive can be found at the British Film Institute’s site located at: https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/shadow-substance-f-w-murnaus-nosferatu

The University of California’s Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive has a listing with information on thirteen of F. W. Murnau’s films that were previously screened: https://bampfa.org/program/f-w-murnau-voyages-imaginary

Top Insert Image: Thomas Staedeli, “Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau”, Date Unknown, Studio Publicity Card, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: F. W. Murnau, “Matahi and Anne Chevalier”, 1931, “Tabu: A Story of the South Seas” Film Still, Cinematography Floyd Crosby, Flaherty-Murnau Productions, Paramount Pictures

Third Insert Image: F. W. Murnau, “George O’Brien and Margaret Livingston”, 1927, “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans”, Film Still, Cinematography Charles Rosher and Karl Struss, Fox Film Corporation

Fourth Insert Image: F. W. Murnau, “The Haunted Castle”, 1921, Film Still, Cinematography Franz Arno Wagner and László Schäffer, Uco-Film Company

Bottom Insert Image: F.W. Murnau, “Gösta Ekman as Faust”, 1926, Film Still, Cinematography Carl Hoffmann, Ufa (Germany) Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (USA)

Piero Pompili

The Black and White Photography of Piero Pompili

Born in the Roman borgata of Borghesiana in June of 1967, Piero Pompili is an Italian photographer whose work explores working class people and the landscape of Italy’s major cities. A significant part of his oeuvre is the portraiture of local boxers, those epic heroes from central and southern Italy who fight daily in the cities. A project that has covered a twenty-year period, Pompili’s series establishes the boxers’ identities through their bodies, discipline and skill, as well as their fears and ambitions.

Fascinated by the social and urban landscapes of the inner Italian cities since his childhood, Piero Pompili developed a deep attachment to the energy and passion of the common people. His approach to photography is realistic, not idealized, and presents real people who struggle with doubt but accept discipline and sacrifice through commitment. Pompili focused his images not on the battle itself but rather the strenuous routine of daily workouts and the rituals practiced by the boxers before their entry into the ring.

In April of 2017, Pompili published his “Gladiatori Moderni”, a collection of photographs printed through media company Salzgeber’s book division Bruno Gmuender. The photographs of these modern gladiators were taken in the borgatas of Rome and Naples, within both the gyms and the catacombs where ancient gladiators prepared for their battles.

Pompili’s work was featured in 2023 at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto (MART). In conjunction with the exhibition, MART published the exhibition catalogue “Piero Pompili: Pugili”.

Note: The April 2nd 2017 edition of The Advocate has a short biographical article on Piero Pompili and a collection of images from the “Gladiatori Moderni” at its online site: https://www.advocate.com/books/2017/4/02/modern-gladiators#rebelltitem1

Top Insert Image: Piero Ppmpili, “Self Portrait”, May 2025, Instagram

Bottom Insert Image: Piero Pompili, “Lukaska”, 2018, “Gladiatori Moderni” Series, Gelatin Silver Print