Original title Mein Afrika Genre Illustrations Originally published 1982 Preceded by Coral Gardens | Country United States, Germany Publication date 1982 Page count 232 | |
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Language English (translated), German Publisher List (Germany) Harmony(US) Followed by Leni Riefenstahl's Memoiren Similar Leni Riefenstahl books, Photography books | ||
Vanishing Africa is the title of the 1982 English-language translation of German film director Leni Riefenstahl's Mein Afrika, an illustrations book published in the same year in Germany. It was published by Harmony Books in the United States.
Contents
Synopsis
The pictures are evidence of Riefenstahl's passion for Africa and an attempt to capture the region's soul before it lost its innocence to the technical age.
Reception
The photographs were recently republished along with those of The Last of the Nuba and The People of Kau in the 2002 book, Africa by Leni Riefentstahl. As a result the collection garnered fresh professional reviews that were generally positive: "A big, black Mercedez-Benz of a book.... Ideology aside, the pictures are hard to resist, combining all the voyeuristic pleasures of National Geographic-style anthropology with an unequivocal appreciation of the innate grace and symmetry of the human form... Riefenstahl`s photographs preserve a mythic vision of this Eden before the fall, a romantic lost world, captured in images as powerfully seductive as the artist herself." V Magazine
Documentary
Together with her other published photographs of the Nuba, several photographs from the book were showcased in the 1993 documentary, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.