Some places stay with you not for what they show, but for how they feel when you’re in them. Santorini is one of those places. The curve of the caldera, the grain of volcanic stone, the way the light shifts along a wall. These are things you don’t forget. When I first saw Nelly’s photographs from the island, I recognized that kind of seeing. Quiet. Precise. Without effort to impress.
This August, those photographs return to the island where they were first made. The exhibition Nelly’s: Santorini in the Interwar Years opens August 10 at the Kastellana Center of Photography in Pyrgos and runs through October 20. It is a collaboration between the Benaki Museum and Kastellana, curated by Aliki Tsirgialou and Tonia Nousia, and part of the Santorini 2025: Year of Authenticity program by the Municipality of Thira.
Nelly’s visited Santorini between 1928 and 1932, spending several summers with her sister’s family. She walked the island with a camera, not looking for drama or spectacle, but for structure, rhythm, and light. Many of her compositions are almost still. A staircase. A whitewashed dome. A rooftop just before dusk. People appear now and then, a woman in dark dress, a child near a doorway, but never posed. They are part of the place.
The restraint in these images is what gives them depth. Nelly’s was not interested in romanticizing Santorini. She did not simplify it. She let it be as it was. Her photographs offer space, not summary.
That space holds even more weight when you know what came after. In 1956, a powerful earthquake struck the island, destroying many of the buildings and paths she had quietly recorded. What began as observation became, over time, an archive. A map of what was, and what might have otherwise disappeared.
At Photoglobe, the photography school I run in Thessaloniki, we often talk about what it means to look slowly. Not to frame what we already know, but to wait and respond. That is what I see in this work. Nelly’s was not trying to interpret the island. She was in conversation with it.
The exhibition will open with a public discussion featuring the curators, along with collector Dimitris Tsitouras, poet and artist Dimos Avramiotis, and professor Natassa Markidou. Additional talks and workshops will take place throughout August and September, inviting both adults and children to explore photography as a way of listening to place.
If you’re on Santorini this summer, I hope you’ll visit. The exhibition is open daily, except Wednesdays, from 10:00 to 21:00 at the Kastellana Center of Photography. Admission is free.
These images are quiet. They do not insist. But if you stay with them, they begin to unfold.
Plan Your Visit
Kastellana Center of Photography
Pyrgos, Santorini
August 10 – October 20, 2025
Open daily (except Wednesdays) from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Free admission
More info: kastelana.com/el
Vasiliki Eleftheriou is a photographer and the founder of Photoglobe, a photography school in Thessaloniki. She teaches portrait and creative work with a focus on presence, attention, and how we come to see through the act of making images. Since 2013, she has worked with people of all ages and backgrounds, helping each one find their own way into photography with patience, curiosity, and care.