Response to Leni Riefenstahl

After reading the New Yorker article, I have come to dislike Riefenstahl. Partly, perhaps due to how the New Yorker portrayed Riefenstahl as seemingly seeking art for the sake of making money. It seemed as though she was good at what she did, there didn't seem to be an objective behind it, except to make money - as New Yorker notes the money machine lovers that financed her films, selling photographs that weren't necessarily ethical of the Nuba that allowed her to take photographs of them, but "when they didn’t, she used a telephoto lens." She seems to be the very definition of deception, as she lied seeing the living conditions of prisoners to lying about her age to be certified for scuba diving. Furthermore, her frustration at Muller for not filming her being pulled from the helicopter crash is another sign of her obsession with personality, and not art.

It is interesting however, how in the end, it was the Americans who opened their arms and praised her and her work, despite the past controversies. I think it is something to be said that they were (by and large) unaffected by the period of when Triumph of the Will was filmed, and that they see her for her art, rather than what she stands for.

The author questions her "genius" in the end, and it does seem so - was Riefenstahl just a pretty face that got by because of her beauty, was she just at the right place at the right time, or did she truly make a work of art? I don't care much for her work with the Nuba, it is no different than the work of an anthropologists', except she lacks the very basics of ethics - by photographing the tribe when asked not to. Though she seems to have learned about the tribe, there does not seem to be much other research or opinions, other than what she has observed.