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Text: English, German (translation)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Dream Realized,
By A. Hickman (Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria) - See all my reviews
This review is from: VANISHING AFRICA (Hardcover)
This is the most magnificent book of photography that I have seen in many a year. Of course, at this writing, "Vanishing Africa" is more than two decades old, but I had never even heard of it until I chanced to watch a documentary entitled "The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl" on Sundance. The film contains many a revelation about its fascinating subject, but none so remarkable as Riefenstahl's reincarnation, in the 1950s, as a nature photographer. Banned, for all practical purposes, from making films, she turned her visual sense to advantage by traveling to the Sudan, where she spent twenty years photographing the Nubians and other endangered African peoples. The images that result are every bit as striking and provocative as anything in "Triumph of the Will" or "Olympia." Of equal interest is the introduction that Riefenstahl has provided for the book; her adventures in Africa were not confined to those behind the camera! Fortunately, I am lucky enough to have a friend who possesses this rare and expensive book; I now want very badly to see the underwater film that Riefenstahl, who took up scuba diving in her 70s, completed last year, the same year she marked her centenary.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A rare book of narrative photography capturing a lost world,
By
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This review is from: VANISHING AFRICA (Hardcover)
This is a beautiful and powerful book. Very rarely is the text in a book of photography interesting, but the short 30 pages of text Leni Riefenstahl wrote to accompany her photography is a fascinating adventure of travel and discover and cultural awakening. Many of the photographs were taken in 1962 and 1963 and so they capture an Africa that has almost disappeared by the time the book was published in 1982. I think the most striking feature of the photographs is the narrative thread that links them into an implicit story or sequence of events. Being a film maker, she must have been interested not only in the single photograph but how those photographs weave together to tell a story. This is another strength of the book and makes it a stand out in the world of photography. Her photographs of the tall elegant Maasai are beautiful as they herd cattle, wear orange drapes, use orange face paint, and use orange dyed mud in their hair. Riefenstahl captures the incredible beauty of the Maasai people and in her essay comments on the beautiful breasts of the young unmarried women. The Samburu people of Northern Kenya use large numbers of beaded necklaces to enhance the beauty of their women while their men, rowing in canoes or on barges in the river are as black as night. She also visited and photographed the Falata nomads, Dinka, Murle, and Nuer people in the Southern Sudan. These are people for which cattle is the primary occupation and signifier of wealth, status and class. The different tribes use scarification to signify membership in the tribe. The Shilluk's produce a series or line of round scars across the forehead from ear to ear that have a characteristic protuberance that is unmistakable. Her photographs of the elusive nude Nubians reveal a people with little need for clothing. She captures a Nubian ceremony of manhood whereby a young man becomes an adult and is eligible to wrestle in the often dangerous sport of wrestling with men from other villages. The photographs of the Southern Nubians engaged in intricate and sophisticated face painting and hair design are a highlight of the book. In the final sequence of photographs we see a fascinating series of photographs of the young virgins of the village oiling their nude bodies and dancing in a frenzy, whipping themselves, while the face and body painted men watch while seated waiting for a young virgin, beautiful and covered with sweat and oil, to lay her legs over the shoulders of the man and thus select him as a husband. The dark oiled bodies of the dancing females with their whips contrasted with the stationary men waiting to be selected as a husband is powerful imagery and narrative. The book is exceptional and is a rare masterpiece of photography.
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