Leni Riefenstahl interviewed by Kevin Brownlow
"If Leni Riefenstahl had done nothing but visit Africa and bring back her photographs, her place in history would be secure."
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If Leni Riefenstahl had done nothing but visit Africa and bring back her photographs, her place in history would be secure. For these pictures are an extraordinary record. Equally extraordinary is her stamina; while she made her first visit in her early sixties, she undertook her most recent at 98. Her love for Africa resulted in three photographic books before this one.
Her first expedition should have acted as aversion therapy and put her off for life, for it could hardly have been more disastrous. She set out to make a film about the illegal slave trade in Africa. While travelling north of Nairobi, the driver of her jeep tried to avoid a tiny dik-dik (dwarf antelope); the vehicle hit a rock and was hurled into the air, crashing down into a dry river bed. Leni went through the windscreen and she was severely injured-her head wound was sewn up with a darning needle-and she was not expected to live. With her incredible resilience she recovered. A fleeting glimpse of Masai warriors carrying spears and wearing tribal costume inspired a fascination which led eventually to her photographic work. Ernest Hemingway described the Masai as "the tallest, best-grown, most splendid people that I had ever seen in Africa."
When I spoke to her at her home in Pocking, Leni Riefenstahl, still in pain from yet another crash in Africa, told me that Ernest Hemingway had been responsible for her fascination for the continent.
"I read Hemingway's book, The Green Hills of Africa (1935). And that influenced me. And when I got there, this shimmer, this light that I found in Africa, the warmth and the colours that look so completely different in the heat from those of Europe, all that fascinated me greatly. It reminded me of the Impressionist painters-Manet, Monet, Cézanne."
But it was a picture of Nuba wrestlers-one man carried on the shoulders of another-taken by the English photographer George Rodger, that led to her becoming a great stills photographer herself. It looked, she said, like a sculpture by Rodin and with its brief caption "A Nuba of Kordofan" it drew her magically to a forgotten, little-explored part of Africa. But how to get there? Her finances were low, she had no pension and she had a mother to support. She pursued an opportunity to make a film set around the Nile. She succeeded in obtaining a visa to travel in the Sudan from Ahmed Abu Bakr, the Director of Tourism, who became a friend and who would play an important role in her life. But then the Berlin Wall went up and her backers lost their money. The film was cancelled.
She was given a second chance by the head of the German Nansen Society. Herr Oscar Luz warned her how tough it would be, for Leni was over sixty. But with her training in ballet, mountain-climbing and skiing, she was exceptionally confident. After the meeting, she said, she felt "reborn."
"I had read that the Nuba lived in Kordofan. At first, nobody knew where Kordofan was. It took me a long time to find out that Kordofan was a province of the Sudan. And when I was in Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan, and asked about Kordofan, most people hardly knew, and no one know where the Nuba might be. I was in Khartoum twice before I found someone who even knew the Nuba existed. "When I found out about them, from the photo by Rodger which I had with me, and which I showed to people, and when I was on my way there, the police (chief of Kordofan) told me that these Nuba on the picture-"the unclothed Nuba"-no longer existed. They said they'd existed ten years earlier. But I didn't give up asking and trying to find out."
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
If Leni Riefenstahl had done nothing but visit Africa and bring back her photographs, her place in history would be secure. For these pictures are an extraordinary record. Equally extraordinary is her stamina; while she made her first visit in her early sixties, she undertook her most recent at 98. Her love for Africa resulted in three photographic books before this one.
Her first expedition should have acted as aversion therapy and put her off for life, for it could hardly have been more disastrous. She set out to make a film about the illegal slave trade in Africa. While travelling north of Nairobi, the driver of her jeep tried to avoid a tiny dik-dik (dwarf antelope); the vehicle hit a rock and was hurled into the air, crashing down into a dry river bed. Leni went through the windscreen and she was severely injured-her head wound was sewn up with a darning needle-and she was not expected to live. With her incredible resilience she recovered. A fleeting glimpse of Masai warriors carrying spears and wearing tribal costume inspired a fascination which led eventually to her photographic work. Ernest Hemingway described the Masai as "the tallest, best-grown, most splendid people that I had ever seen in Africa."
When I spoke to her at her home in Pocking, Leni Riefenstahl, still in pain from yet another crash in Africa, told me that Ernest Hemingway had been responsible for her fascination for the continent.
"I read Hemingway's book, The Green Hills of Africa (1935). And that influenced me. And when I got there, this shimmer, this light that I found in Africa, the warmth and the colours that look so completely different in the heat from those of Europe, all that fascinated me greatly. It reminded me of the Impressionist painters-Manet, Monet, Cézanne."
But it was a picture of Nuba wrestlers-one man carried on the shoulders of another-taken by the English photographer George Rodger, that led to her becoming a great stills photographer herself. It looked, she said, like a sculpture by Rodin and with its brief caption "A Nuba of Kordofan" it drew her magically to a forgotten, little-explored part of Africa. But how to get there? Her finances were low, she had no pension and she had a mother to support. She pursued an opportunity to make a film set around the Nile. She succeeded in obtaining a visa to travel in the Sudan from Ahmed Abu Bakr, the Director of Tourism, who became a friend and who would play an important role in her life. But then the Berlin Wall went up and her backers lost their money. The film was cancelled.
She was given a second chance by the head of the German Nansen Society. Herr Oscar Luz warned her how tough it would be, for Leni was over sixty. But with her training in ballet, mountain-climbing and skiing, she was exceptionally confident. After the meeting, she said, she felt "reborn."
"I had read that the Nuba lived in Kordofan. At first, nobody knew where Kordofan was. It took me a long time to find out that Kordofan was a province of the Sudan. And when I was in Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan, and asked about Kordofan, most people hardly knew, and no one know where the Nuba might be. I was in Khartoum twice before I found someone who even knew the Nuba existed. "When I found out about them, from the photo by Rodger which I had with me, and which I showed to people, and when I was on my way there, the police (chief of Kordofan) told me that these Nuba on the picture-"the unclothed Nuba"-no longer existed. They said they'd existed ten years earlier. But I didn't give up asking and trying to find out."
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Leni Riefenstahl - Africa
Hardcover + Box, 34.5 x 50 cm (13.6 x 19.7 in.), 564 pages
$ 4000.00
$ 4000.00
Leni Riefenstahl's remarkable Africa oeuvre. Limited edition of 2,500 copies worldwide, each numbered and signed by Leni Riefenstahl
