Lot 20 D

Originally, 15 copies of the portfolio were created. However, only 7 portfolio sets were entirely preserved and completely sold.

Leni Riefenstahl's series of the Nuba depicts, in addition to her film shots and photographs that were created on the occasion of the 1936 Olympic Games, the series of works upon which her reputation as a photographer is essentially based. In their idealising representation of the human body, emphasizing its physical strength and flawless elegance, the images of the Olympic athletes and the Nuba tribal members are closely related on an aesthetic level.
In 1962, Riefenstahl set off to Sudan for the first time where she met one of the numerous Nuba tribes, the Masakin-Qisar, whom she accompanied with her camera for several months. In addition to everyday scenes, she captured the ritual wrestling matches characteristic of the tribe and the expressive body painting of the tribe members. Despite all the significance the work has from an anthropological and ethnological point of view, the photographs go far beyond the documentary. Here Riefenstahl proves herself to be an artist who masters the handling of perspective, space, and colour perfectly and is able to transform what she sees into timeless, captivatingly beautiful images. The photographer depicts the fighters armed with spears from a slightly lower perspective, causing the lavishly painted faces of women and men in full-format portraits to have a somewhat heroic, monumental effect, or lets their ash-dusted bodies to enter into a finely nuanced hue with the light blue of the sky.
Leni Riefenstahl's photographs of the Nuba, which were taken over a period of fifteen years, quickly gained recognition from the international press and were published many times, for example in Stern, the French Paris Match, or the American Life Magazine. In 1973, her first illustrated book Die Nuba - Menschen wie von einem anderen Stern was published, in 1976, the second volume Die Nuba von Kau followed, in 1983, the third Mein Afrika.
Published in 2002, edited and luxuriously designed by Christian Diener, this portfolio of thirty prints created using the elaborate dye-transfer process comprises the most important and best-known photographs from the Nuba series.