''The Last of the Nuba'' is the English-language title of German film director

Leni Riefenstahl Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (; 22 August 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film director, photographer and actress known for her role in producing Nazi propaganda. A talented swimmer and an artist, Riefenstahl also became in ...

's 1973 ''Die Nuba'', a book of photographs, published a year later in the United States. It was an international bestseller and was followed up by the 1976 book '' Die Nuba von Kau''. It was the subject of a famous critique by Susan Sontag in claiming that it adhered to a "fascist aesthetic".

Overview

Between 1962 and 1977, Riefenstahl had been photographing people of different

Nuba The Nuba people are indigenous inhabitants of central Sudan. Nuba are various indigenous ethnic groups who inhabit the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan state in Sudan, encompassing multiple distinct people that speak different languages which b ...

ethnic groups in the southern part of Sudan on several visits. She was the first white female photographer who had obtained a special permission by the Sudanese government to do her research in the remote

Nuba mountains The Nuba Mountains ( ar, جبال النوبة), also referred to as the Nuba Hills, is an area located in South Kordofan, Sudan. The area is home to a group of indigenous ethnic groups known collectively as the Nuba peoples. In the Middle Ages ...

of Sudan. She observed the Nuba's way of life and recorded it on film and in pictures. For some of her photographs and film scenes, she relied on Sudanese cameraman

Gadalla Gubara Gadalla Gubara (, 1920–2008) was a Sudanese cameraman, film producer, director and photographer. Over five decades, he produced more than 50 documentaries and three feature films. He was a pioneer of African cinema, having been a co-founder of ...

, who accompanied her to the Nuba mountains. Together with

George Rodger George William Adam Rodger (19 March 1908 – 24 July 1995) was a British photojournalist noted for his work in Africa and for photographing the mass deaths at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the end of the Second World War. Life and career ...

's earlier photo essay on the Nuba and Latuka tribes, published in 1951 in National Geographic magazine, Riefenstahl's photographic documents are of anthropological, ethnological, and cultural-historical importance in relation to traditional life in the Nuba mountains of these times.

Reception

In her native Germany, the Art Director's Club of Germany awarded Riefenstahl a gold medal for the best photographic achievement of 1975.Leni Riefenstahl interviewed by Kevin Brownlow
Taschen Shortly after its 1974 release in America, the critic Susan Sontag scrutinized the "fascist aesthetics" of the works in her essay "Fascinating Fascism". Writing in the ''

New York Review of Books New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...

'' in 1975, she stated: "The fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets". She continued "Its choreography alternates between ceaseless motion and a congealed, static, 'virile' posing. Sontag wrote that the collection was the "final, necessary step in Riefenstahl's rehabilitation. It is the final rewrite of the past; or, for her partisans, the definitive confirmation that she was always a beauty-freak rather than a horrid propagandist." In December 1974, American writer and photographer

Eudora Welty Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an American short story writer, novelist and photographer who wrote about the American South. Her novel '' The Optimist's Daughter'' won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerou ...

reviewed the book positively for the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', giving a personal account of the

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...

of Riefenstahl's book: Academic studies, giving critical appraisals of Riefenstahl's books on the Nuba people, have been published by Alexandra Ludewig of the University of Western Australia and by anthropologist James C. Faris of the University of Connecticut. In his biography on Riefenstahl, the German media critic Rainer Rother gives a detailed account of her repeated visits to the Nuba people, comparing her approach to taking the photographs that seem to have started with a personal fascination of an African world, "unspoilt by civilization", up to her later carefully planned photo expeditions in order to further her fame as a photographer. Another examination of both Riefenstahl's books and of James C. Faris's criticism was undertaken as a comment on a television film, called ''The Nuba'' from the BBC “Worlds Apart” ethnographic series. Here, the author John Ryle describes both the approach of the German photographer and of the anthropologist, trying to do justice to both. Also, he questions the attitude and moral judgements of the admirers of such "exotic pictures from Africa".

Overview

Reception

See also

References

Further reading