[2] She went on to study photography in Germany under Hugo Erfurth and Franz Fiedler, in 1920-1921, before the 1922 expulsion of the ethnic Greeks of Asia Minor by the Turks following the Greco-Turkish war (1919–1922).
As a Greek of the Diaspora, Nelly's view of Greece was nothing less than "idyllic", which matched the propaganda aims of the proto-fascist regime, led by General Ioannis Metaxas.
In fact, her work helped illustrate the ideologeme of the racial continuity of the Greeks since Antiquity, which was at the core of Metaxas' agenda (the so-called "Third Hellenic Civilization".
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.