Maasai photographs by Leni Riefenstahl

Although the Nuba occupy a more significant place in Riefenstahl’s legacy and work, the Maasai are also prominently represented, with their images forming the second largest set of objects in her photographic archive.

In Mein Afrika, Riefenstahl describes her first fleeting encounter with two young Maasai men in Kenya in 1956 as a “turning point in [her] life” and an awakening concerning her fascination for Africa (Riefenstahl 1982, p. 17). Traveling on a country road with her guide George Six, she observed two individuals she describes as “royal figures” (ibid, p. 16). She noted that the experience was particularly striking because she had “never seen African natives in this original state” before, only those “dressed in European clothing” (ibid, p. 16).

In addition to this initial encounter with the Maasai in Kenya in 1956, Riefenstahl visited Kenya and northern Tanzania – the regions inhabited by the Maasai – a second time in 1963 and verifiably in 1970, 1971, 1972, and probably in 1961 and 1975, too. It cannot be ruled out that these were not her only visits to the region, but no concrete evidence of further trips to Maasai areas at other times has been found.

A community-based field study was conducted in northern Tanzania between 14 October and 14 November 2024, focusing on the Leni Riefenstahl archive and the Maasai photographs it contains. The research took the approach of handing over not only the photographs, but also the knowledge embedded within them. Photographs were shared and discussed with members of various Maasai communities and descendants of those depicted. The research sought to reconnect descendants with the images of their family members and explore the cultural and historical contexts of the photographs. Following the interviews, the descendants were given analogue – and in some cases digital – prints of the photographs of their relatives.

Following this, 148 photographs were selected from over 400 images of the Maasai in Leni Riefenstahl’s archive, which is housed at Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) in Berlin, Germany. The archive is notable for the fact that the number of photographs far exceeds the number of motifs. Riefenstahl often captured individual subjects multiple times in extensive image series. As a result, her archive is characterised by large numbers of similar images of the same individuals and duplications of her favourite shots. In selecting the photographs to be used in field research, these duplicates were excluded, as well as any damaged or blurred images, and in each case only one image was selected to be used for the interview. This was particularly helpful in avoiding overwhelming the interviewees with an excessive number of images.

Within the framework of the research project, examining the Maasai as the second most significant ethnic group represented in Riefenstahl’s archive provides a valuable contrast to insights from the Nuba works. A comparative approach reveals both parallels and differences in how Riefenstahl’s photographs are received by these two distinct communities. Additionally, this perspective allows us to evaluate how Riefenstahl’s work developed over an extended period.
Overall, this interaction enriches (museum) knowledge by integrating Maasai perspectives and shedding light on the sensitivity and historical significance of these images. The research further highlights the importance of including Maasai voices in the broader discourse surrounding the photographs, adding a crucial ethical dimension to the study. While Riefenstahl’s Maasai photographs have significantly influenced perceptions of the Maasai in the Global North, they remain largely unknown within the Maasai communities themselves.

MW

Leni Riefenstahl captured over 400 photographs of Maasai individuals across at least six distinct regions (Monduli, Arusha, Rombo, Loitokitok, Moito and Loliondo). She visited Tanzania and Kenya at least five times, spending several weeks travelling through these areas taking photographs. Her subjects included individuals of all ages: elders, children, women and men, photographed in groups or as isolated figures, performing daily tasks or taken during ceremonies. While some images are posed, others are candid snapshots, with many remaining unpublished. However, Riefenstahl rarely documented contextual details and seldom recorded the names of those she photographed.

In her travelogues, Riefenstahl portrays herself as a lone adventurer journeying through the East African savannah, seeking ideal subjects for her photographs. In Mein Afrika, she narrates repeated attempts to approach Maasai groups, only to be met with resistance as her potential subjects turned away or threatened her with sticks. Far from respecting these boundaries, Riefenstahl interpreted them as challenges to overcome, writing (in German) “This resistance spurred me on” (1982, p. 17; all quotations translated by the author). Leni Riefenstahl’s archive contains several essays in various languages containing assorted anecdotes and information about her visits to East Africa. These stories also appear in various forms in different publications. In one of these unpublished manuscripts dating from 1963 she describes how she pursued a group of 40 Maasai men through the savannah for hours to secure her shot. These accounts reveal Riefenstahl’s approach to photography and ethics, demonstrating that she viewed her persistence not as invasive but as a mark of determination. In her opinion, the effort she exerted in extracting these images enhanced their value.

Yet these narratives also highlight Riefenstahl’s deliberate fabrication of events to craft a certain image of herself. Her archive reveals inconsistencies, with the same stories appearing in various versions. In one manuscript, she recounts finally catching up with young Maasai warriors after a lengthy chase to quickly capture a photograph of a resistant young man. She claims that she tried to talk to him in Maa but he answered her in English, and their subsequent conversation revealed that even though dressed in traditional Maasai cloth he had studied in London. When askesd what he was doing there, he answered “I like being a Maasai”. A similar anecdote appears in Mein Afrika, but with significant changes. This time, she recounts getting lost while driving alone through the Tanzanian steppe, spotting two Maasai men with shields and spears, and asking them for directions in English, “although it seemed utterly pointless” (1982, p. 19). To her surprise, one of the men responded in English, leading to a conversation identical to that in her manuscript.

The varying details of the story – down to the hairstyle of the Maasai men – stand in stark contrast to the unchanged wording of their conversation. While in one of her manuscripts she describes at length that the person in question wore a clay headdress typical of Maasai warriors, in a review of Maasai by Tepilit Ole Saitoti and Carol Beckwith, published in Welt des Buches on 15 August 1988, she recalls that he wore a lion’s mane. Through these tales, Riefenstahl sought to juxtapose the stereotypical image of “primitive” natives with her supposed discovery of educated individuals among them – an isolated occurrence in her narrative. However, research tracing her footsteps in Tanzania reveals that many of the Maasai she interacted with were, in fact, educated people.

One such figure is Stephen Orpanyi Nerarwa, a well-known individual in the Monduli district of Tanzania from the 1960s through to the present day. Although Riefenstahl never mentioned his name in her accounts or provided specific details about where the encounter took place, her 1963 trip notebook includes Nerarwa’s name and a note remarking on his fluency in English (fig. 1). Another notebook contains an address and post office box number in Monduli. Despite her depictions of solitary adventures, her notes indicate that she travelled with Edward Barnoti (fig. 2) and Peter Kashe, the latter serving as a district commissioner in Monduli at the time. Both were educated Maasai who often escorted foreign visitors into Maasai communities. In her report Riefenstahl notes that Kashe gave Nerarwa a lift in his car.

Moreover, the paramount chief Lengiteng’ Lemkoko, a traditional Maasai leader in Manyara division, recalls Nerarwa as an educated Maasai involved in local politics during that period. It is improbable that Kashe did not know Nerarwa personally when he gave him a lift. However, Riefenstahl’s accounts omit such figures, focusing instead on her lone pursuit of Maasai subjects, aligning with colonial narratives of the white explorer as a heroic, solitary agent.

While conducting fieldwork in Tanzania, and with the help of research assistant Lengakwi Laizer, I received an opportunity to speak with Stephen Nerarwa’s descendants. I also met with Edward Kalo Barnoti’s son, Alais Edward Mbarnoti, his wife Naitapuaki Mbarnoti and Fidelis Kashe, the son of Peter Kashe, who is himself now politically active in Monduli. Furthermore, we visited the family of Ndoros Alanana, who was the highest-ranking laibon (Maasai chief) in Tanzania from the 1950s to the 1970s. It was during this conversation with his son Saruni Ndoros, his grandson Motoio Nendia and his mother Ngitakai Ndaya Ndoros that another relative was identified in the photographs. I also talked to Lengiteng’ Lemkoko, the human rights activist and lawyer Joseph Oleshangay, as well as Naishoki Laizer, Neema Kipailel and Leah Laizer, all in Oltukai Monduli district. These conversations helped fill gaps in Riefenstahl’s archive and shed light on the individuals she reduced to representative figures of her idealised vision of Africa, projecting her own fantasies about nature, culture and beauty onto them.

When visiting Stephen Nerarwa’s family, their initial reaction was one of apprehension, fearing we had come to collect a debt he might have incurred during his time in Europe. According to Maasai customary law, unresolved offences can bring misfortune upon a family until reconciliation occurs. However, when they realised our visit was part of a larger research project, some family members initially lost interest. Their enthusiasm was reignited when they identified Stephen in the photographs we presented, which transformed the dynamics of our interaction. The image bore witness to Riefenstahl’s encounter with Nerarwa; it symbolised a tangible connection to their relative and validated our efforts and presence.

One of Nerarwa’s nephews bore a striking resemblance to him and seemed most attached to the photograph, holding it tightly as his elder brother led the discussion (fig. 4). They spoke of their pride in Nerarwa’s achievements; he had studied in Europe and held a leading military position in the 1980s. Yet they also described him as an orkirikoi: a restless individual who roams without settling or caring for his family. After marrying a non-Maasai and leaving the area, Nerarwa returned only as an old man to live with his brother’s family, who cared for him until his death in 2016.

In 1978, Grzimek and Riefenstahl co-authored a coffee table book alongside Reinhold Messner and Herbert Tichy, featuring Riefenstahl’s photographs of the Maasai, Nuba and Shilluk. While the Maasai figure prominently in the images, Riefenstahl notably excludes them from her text. Unlike Mein Afrika, however, this publication includes captions with brief contextual information.

However, the relationship between Grzimek and Riefenstahl had already begun much earlier, during the Third Reich. Grzimek, a member of the NSDAP from 1937 onwards, built his career in the Nazi Germany of the 1930s. By the time they met in 1940, Grzimek was serving as a government advisor in the Reichsministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft (Ministry of Food and Agriculture), while Riefenstahl had just begun work on her film Tiefland and was seeking a trained wolf for one of its scenes. Grzimek not only provided her with his wolf, Dschingis, but also formed a close bond with Riefenstahl. Their relationship was marked by long conversations that included discussions on the Nazi practice of euthanasia, which Grzimek reportedly supported.[1] However, although she must have been in contact with Grzimek, there is no evidence of any correspondence in her archive.

These intertwined narratives of ethnographic encounters, archival research and historical context highlight the complexities surrounding Riefenstahl’s work and its enduring legacy. Engaging with the descendants and relatives of those depicted in her photographs not only rehumanises individuals who have been reduced to aesthetic symbols in her idealised portrayals, but also reveals the colonial and conservationist ideologies that have marginalised the Maasai to this day, situating her work within the broader historical, cultural and political context of the time.

MW

The role of nudity in Leni Riefenstahl’s work on Africa is undeniable. However, in her photographs of the Maasai most of the people depicted are clothed. This is largely because she did not encounter the Maasai she photographed in a state of undress. There are, however, a few exceptions which were deeply troubling for the Maasai participants interviewed in the course of this research. While many of Riefenstahl’s photographs of the Maasai were positively received, the images featuring nudity triggered strong emotional responses: anger, shame and a sense of discomfort. Due to the sensitive nature of these images, they were not openly discussed with all participants, but only in specific settings where everyone involved had agreed in advance to the conversation and following a trigger warning.

In the context of this report I decided to show the images that are being discussed despite their problematic nature. I do so in accordance with Daniel Foliard, who notes in The Violence of Colonial Photography that “Susan Sontag’s strategy of not showing photographic material no longer works in an age that massively communicates via the visual; Whether one likes it or not, there is little room to skip images in the twenty-first century” (2022, p. 12), adding that concealing a photograph may infuse it with more power rather than dissolving it. However, in order to avoid reproducing the violence inscribed in these images, sensitive parts have been censored.

Contrary to her narrative of the solitary adventuress who daringly crept up to groups of Maasai to surreptitiously photograph them or who was wordlessly led by them through the savannah into a boma to drink milk out of a calabash, Leni Riefenstahl was anything but independent, and the Maasai with whom she came into contact were anything but mute. In a time before mass tourism came to Tanzania, Peter Kashe escorted guests into the areas that were then just beginning to be declared national parks. In the course of this development he worked together with the colonial government and international organisations, showed them around and advocated for the relocation of Maasai communities away from the projected nature reserves. This was a decision he would later regret.

Fidelis says that they were betrayed. “It is better that my daddy is not alive to see how it is today,” he adds, alluding to the current violent expulsion and relocation of Maasai people from the Loliondo region, where the pastoralist herdsmen began to be displaced in 2022 to make way for a commercial hunting area.
“I remember, my daddy always said: all these people, they took my photographs and one day, they will bring them back,” Fidelis says. Many white people came to the region at the time and travelled with his father. Fidelis relates anecdotes from his father’s life, saying that he regarded these people as his friends. Bernhard Grzimek, whom the Maasai human rights activist Joseph Oleshangay calls the “godfather of Tanzanian conservation politics” and whom the human rights organisation Survival International describes as the „enemy of the Maasai“ , was one of the people whom Peter Kashe guided through Ngorongoro – a region that is still contested today. “Someday you will find my pictures,” Kashe told his son.

Fidelis is euphoric – that day has come, and we have brought him the pictures for which his father waited in vain for many years. None of the photographs we showed to descendants in Tanzania had ever reached the families. In the Maasai community, owning one’s own photographs is something special. Although more and more people are using smartphones today, physical copies of photographs are closely guarded and highly desirable objects. As pastoralists, Maasai often live in villages far from the nearest road or city. While photographers may be hired for festivities, doing so is expensive and therefore infrequent, and most Maasai do not have access to images of themselves. However, they themselves have become desirable subjects for photography through tourism and the idealisation of their culture in the Global North, not least via illustrated volumes such as Riefenstahl’s Mein Afrika. This situation gives rise to an ambivalent relationship with the medium, which turns the Maasai into an object that can be circulated and consumed globally while simultaneously excluding them from the circulation, consumption and control of their own images.

Interestingly, we can find indications in Leni Riefenstahl’s estate that she was aware her subjects would have liked to receive copies of the pictures in which they appeared. A folder with photographs includes an index card with the note (in German): “Hand over to Maasai in Loitokitok in person”. That the collection remained among her papers, however, suggests that this intention was not put into practice.