Flex Mentallo

Her descriptions of her first trips make it clear that she was not interested in anyone in the Southern Nuba area in clothing or who went to school (Riefenstahl actually notes with pleasure her success in undressing people for their photographs). She clearly saw the Nuba as having stalled in some evolutionary scheme, and saw her Southern Nuba photographs as "biblical images which could have dated back to the earliest days of mankind." And yet she also declared that "I felt compelled to record this ritual of a disappearing culture." Riefenstahl constantly suggests she was at the end of the known world and that few if any others had ever ventured as far as she. Yet according to the anthropologist James C Faris, all of southern Kordofan was well known to many people. 'She makes absurd claims, such as the fact that no outsider had ever spent the rainy season in the southern Nuba Mountains, when even the slightest reading of history would have made it clear that all manner of people had done so.'

It was at this time she claims to have seen a photograph by George Rodger, the British Magnum photographer, of Southern Nuba (Mesakin) wrestlers, which inspired her to visit Kordofan. Rodger had visited the Sudan prior to independence in the 1950s, and published a small book of photographs. He had originally come to Sudan after having been a wartime photographer assigned to accompany allied troops liberating concentration camps. He had actually come to Sudan to flee the horrors of Belsen, and in the most grotesque of ironies, his work inspired Riefenstahl to follow him, and although he refused her repeated requests to disclose their location, she eventually located them 15 years later - by which time they had become far less isolated. Rodger was apparently bitter about this turn of events the rest of his life.

After the war, Riefenstahl came to Africa. She secured permission to film in the closed districts of Sudan, and attached herself to a group of German physicians and dentists of the German Nansen Society in the 1960s. She got by bureaucrats (such as Sudan Customs) by throwing fits, weeping and yelling. This is the way she operated repeated in Sudan, with great success.

Towards the end of her life (she died at the age of 101 in 2003) she lived in luxury outside Munich, in a grand glass house known colloquially as "the house the Nuba built." This is the result of (and in reference to) the outstanding commercial success of her books on Africans-principally two different groups of Nuba peoples of South Kordofan. Sudan. She made no attempts to share any of the subsequent wealth with the communities photographed.

'The line taken by Riefenstahl’s defenders, who now include the most influential voices in the avant-garde film establishment, is that she was always concerned with beauty.' (Susan Sontag)

Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (22 August 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party. Riefenstahl's prominence in the Third Reich along with her personal friendship with Adolf Hitler thwarted her film career following Germany's defeat in World War II, after which she was arrested but released without any charges. While she was protected from prosecution by powerful friends following the war, even a cursory study makes it impossible to believe that she was unaware of what the Nazis were doing. She was clearly enamored of the Nazi hierarchy, especially Adolf Hitler, shared his confidence on many occasions, and is argued to have turned over lists of film technicians and cameramen , and was given access to and actually used concentration camp inmates as extras in at least one of her films.

The Nuba Mountains mark the southern border of the sands of the desert and the northern limit of good soils washed down by the Nile River. Many Nubas, however, have migrated to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum to escape persecution and the effects of Sudan’s civil war. Most of the rest of the 1,000,000 Nuba people live in villages and towns of between 1,000 and 50,000 inhabitants in areas in and surrounding the Nuba mountains. Nuba villages are often built where valleys run from the hills out on to the surrounding plains, because water is easier to find at such points and wells can be used all year long. There is no political unity among the various Nuba groups who live on the hills. Often the villages do not have chiefs but are instead organized into clans or extended family groups with village authority left in the hands of clan elders.

The Nuba people reside in one of the most remote and inaccessible places in all of Sudan, the foothills of the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan. At one time the area was considered a place of refuge, bringing together people of many different tongues and backgrounds who were fleeing oppressive governments and slave traders.

In 1962 - when I was 10, The Sunday Times began to publish color supplements. For a boy still forming views about the world, they were an invaluable source of the kind of photography I became interested in. For me the most memorable issues were from 12th and 19th October 1975, which featured Leni Riefenstahl's photographs of the Nuba tribe of Southern Ethiopia. I eventually acquired a great tome on her photographs called Riefenstahl's Africa. But though my fascination with body art remains undiminished, the uncritical eye with which I regarded Riefenstahl's photographs in 1975 regards things differently today.

Riefenstahl's Africa 'I can simply say that I feel spontaneously attracted by everything that is beautiful. Yes: beauty, harmony. And perhaps this care for composition, this aspiration to form is in effect something very German. But I don’t know these things myself, exactly. It comes from the unconscious and not from my knowledge…. What do you want me to add? Whatever is purely realistic, slice-of-life, what is average, quotidian, doesn’t interest me…. I am fascinated by what is beautiful, strong, healthy, what is living. I seek harmony. When harmony is produced I am happy. I believe, with this, that I have answered you.' Leni Riefenstahl

For example, is it ethical to take photographs without permission? And if only after permission is given, what exactly have you photographed? I have never taken a photograph when the subject has clearly indicated they dont want me to, but in my quest to capture some kind of truth, I have taken far more photographs of which the subject was unaware, which makes me in fact a voyeur. There are no easy, comfortable answers. And this is not least because as Serendip shows, I've taken thousands of photographs of people in India.

The tribal people of Papua New Guinea who when first confronted by Westerners wielding cameras were said to declare that the image would 'steal their souls' had it right. Through the camera's eye they had been abducted. So in photographing India I have to confront these matters, and ask myself honestly what am I doing? When I visited Darjeeling with Purnabha and Lucina in 2016, I chanced to take a snap of this street vendor, who promptly demanded 1000 rupees for the privilege. Whenever I have photographed destitute people I have paid them. But this was a rare occasion when money was demanded of me. This raises profound questions for me regarding the ethics of the photographic process with which I still wrestle.

Photography, stealer of souls, or compassionate chronicle?

Me too! Everyone walks a different road And the signs are never clear Just don't be fooled by the ones that say You can't get there from here Every turn is a lesson learned And the bumps make us strong So travel through with a heart that's true To the road your walking on Take the detours as you find them And the shortcuts when you can With a storm on the horizon And the dream around the bend And take it all in Turn it around Keep trusting in The road you're walking down The way to your dreams Can only be found With one foot in eternity And one on shaky ground

“Knowledge is only rumour, until it is in the muscle.” old New Guinean proverb

So there we are, there's a beginning. From collecting books through ornithology to anthropology, and the passing of paradise. Whatever next?

The Huli were not known to Europeans until November 1934, when at least fifty of them were killed by the Fox brothers, two adventurers unsuccessfully looking for gold who had just parted with the more famous explorers Mick and Dan Leahy. But that's another story.

Another reason they are famous is because they paint their faces, usually with yellow, red, and white decorations. They also make wigs from their own hair. The wigs look more like plumed hats, and they are not only intricately decorated with feathers of paradise birds, but also with the feathers from colorful parrots. The indispensable complement of their outfit is an axe with a Cassowary claw. The back side of a Huli tribesman’s throat is ornamented by various decorations, the most striking of which is a beak of a hornbill.

The Huli or Haroli are an indigenous people who live in the Southern Highlands districts of Tari, Koroba, Margaraima and Komo, of Papua New Guinea. The Huli have lived in their region for 1,000 years and recount lengthy oral histories relating to individuals and their clans. They were extensive travellers (predominantly for trade) in both the highlands and lowlands surrounding their homeland, particularly to the south.

The Huli tribe (photos by Jimmy Nelson)

Societies of New Guinea often use bird-of-paradise plumes in their dress and rituals, and the plumes were popular in Europe in past centuries as adornment for ladies' millinery. Hunting for plumes and habitat destruction have reduced some species to endangered status; habitat destruction due to deforestation is now the predominant threat

With their extravagant, sweeping plumage and glorious iridescent colours, birds of paradise appear almost mythical: indeed it was once thought that they lived entirely in the air, only falling to the ground when they died. Their plumes have been exchanged as currency and worn in sovereigns’ crowns, and they played a part in helping Darwin, together with A . R. Wallace, formulate his theory of evolution.