directedOlympia, 1938; directedTiefland, 1954. Impri-
soned briefly before formally ‘‘denazified’’ by American
army officials, 1945; imprisoned, placed under house
arrest, and then committed to an insane asylum by the
French, 1946–1947. Grand Prix and Gold Medal winner,
Paris World Fair, 1937; Polar Prize of Sweden, 1938;
Olympic Diploma and Olympic Gold Medal, Interna-
tional Olympic Committee, Lausanne, Switzerland,- Worked extensively in Africa photographing the
Nuba in the Sudan, 1970s. Died September 8, 2003
Germany.
Selected Works
Riefenstahl, Leni.Coral Gardens. Trans. Elizabeth Walter.
London: Collins, 1978.
———.Last of the Nuba. London: Harvill, 1995.
———.Leni Riefenstahl’s Africa. Trans. Kathrine Talbot.
London: Harvill, 1982.
———.Olympia. London: Quartet, 1994.
———.People of Kau. Trans. J. Maxwell Brownjohn. Lon-
don: Harvill, 1997.
———.The Sieve of Time: The Memoirs of Leni Riefen-
stahl. London: Quartet, 1987.
———.Vanishing Africa. Trans. Kathrine Talbot. New
York: Harmony, 1982.Further Reading
Berg, Renata.Leni Riefenstahl. Boston: Twayne, 1980.
Elsaesser, Thomas. ‘‘Leni Riefenstahl: The Body Beautiful,
Art Cinema, and Fascist Aesthetics.’’Women and Film:
A Sight and Sound Reader. Ed. Pam Cook and Philip
Dodd. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1993. 186–97.
———. ‘‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman.’’Sight
and Sound3.2 (February 1993): 14–18.
Grenier, Richard. ‘‘The Fuehrer’s Filmmaker.’’Commen-
tary98.2 (August 1994): 48–51.
Riefenstahl, Leni.Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir, New York:
Picador USA, 1995.
Salkeld, Audrey.A Portrait of Leni Riefenstahl. London:
Cape, 1996.
Angelika Taschen, ed.Leni Riefenstahl: Five Lives, New
York: Taschen America Llc, 2000.JACOB RIIS
American
Jacob A. Riis started the social documentary move-
ment in photography in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries by utilizing photography
in his calls for reform of Manhattan’s Lower East
Side slums. A newspaper reporter by trade, Riis
never considered himself a photographer and, in
fact, knew relatively little about photography. Yet
he realized the power of photographs, and he be-
came one of the most effective social reformers of
the Progressive era by employing his camera to
shock people into helping change the living condi-
tions of the poor. Riis was also perhaps the first to
produce a mass-market book that contained a num-
ber of photographic illustrations.
Born in Ribe, Denmark in 1849, Riis immigrated
to the United States as a young adult. After experi-
encing a number of hardships and struggling to find
work as a carpenter, Riis got a job with the New
York News Association in 1873 gathering general
news. He then became editor of theSouth Brooklyn
Newsin 1874 before joining theNew York Tribune
as a police reporter in 1878. All police reporters
worked from an office on Mulberry Street in the
Lower East Side, and Riis soon became familiar
with all of the problems in the tenements. He came
to believe that the slums were producing a genera-
tion of lost Americans, and he determined to re-
medy the situation.
Possessing no skill at drawing, Riis wondered
how he might bring his experience of the slums to
people who would never dare to venture into them.
He saw an ad for a German method of taking
pictures by a method of flash termed ‘‘flashlight.’’
Realizing that the darkest reaches of the slums
could perhaps be documented through photogra-
phy, Riis hired photographers, but when this
arrangement failed, he took up the camera himself.
In 1888, now working for theNew York Sun, Riis
bought a kit that included a 45 wooden box
camera, plateholders, a tripod, a safety lantern,
developing trays, and a printing frame. To gain
experience, he made a couple of exposures at Pot-
ter’s Field on Hart’s Island then ventured out into
the night. The flashlight that Riis used consisted of
a pistol lamp that fired magnesium cartridges and
often terrorized the slum residents. The flash alsoRIEFENSTAHL, LENI