The People of Kau. Photographs, Text and Layout by Leni Riefenstahl
New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1976. 1st US Edition. Large quarto, publisher's olive cloth, spine stamped in brown, illustrated endpapers, original photo-illustrated dust jacket.
First US edition of German filmmaker and Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl’s study of a Sudanese tribe. One of the most revered and reviled filmmakers in history, Riefenstahl was Hitler's personal filmmaker, helping to form the public image of Nazism, most infamously with Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938). Never convicted for her complicity in the Nazi regime, she lived in relative isolation after the war. Inspired by Ernest Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa and the work of George Rodger, in the 1960s and 70s she made several trips to Sudan, resulting in her photo series of Nubian peoples living in the Sudanese mountains. A follow up to the best-selling The Last of the Nuba (1973), this monograph comprises dozens of images she took over the course of four months while visiting the region, the noted highlight being a 30-page sequence depicting the Kau Nuba’s facial decorations. Riefenstahl's series was famously critiqued by Susan Sontag, who described her as "the only major artist who was completely identified with the Nazi era and whose work—not only during the Third Reich but thirty years after its fall—has consistently illustrated some of the themes of fascist aesthetics." Illustrated with color plates. Riefenstahl's text translated from the original German by J. Maxwell Brownjohn. Originally published in Germany earlier the same year. Unclipped dust jacket with minor toning and edgewear. Near fine. Item #11991
$65.00