Berlin: Deutschen Verlag. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. FIRST EDITION, in exceptionally fine dust jacket and extremely rare original glassine, of Riefenstahl's classic monument to the athletes of the 1936 Olympics. Profusely illustrated with 273 black-and-white photographs. "With the German photographer Leni Riefenstahl, sports imagery rose to new aesthetic heights. Commissioned by Joseph Goebbels, she brought her considerable visual and organizational skills to bear on both the photographing and filming the 1936 Olympic Games. Although the film Olympiad has become an acknowledged classic, her book of photographs, Schönheit im Olympischen Kampf, no less spectacular in its own way, is less known. Sometimes Riefenstahl relied on poses modelled on the antique Greek ideal, faithful to Hitler's belief that modern Teutonic man was 'feeling closer to classical antiquity' than he had 'in possibly a thousand years'. But far more original were her depictions of superbly athletic bodies soaring gracefully through the air and knifing effortlessly through the water. Riefenstahl applied certain devices characteristic of the new German photography- strong diagonals, tight croppings, and bird's-eye and worm's-eye views. No longer was the camera an earthbound witness; it took to the air and the water with the athletes" (William A. Ewing, The Body). Roth 96: ("These are such exquisite, such transcendentally beautiful images of ...

Berlin Im Deutschen Verlag 1937 First Edition Hardcover Fine in Near Fine+ jacket First Printing of Riefenstahl's "lavish, " controversial photobook, a "masterpiece of the propagandist's art." (Parr & Badger) Royal 8vo (309 x 234mm): 282, [2]pp, complete with 273 full-page gravure plates captioned in German, French, English, Spanish, and Italian. Publisher's burnt orange coarsely woven cloth, spine and upper cover stamped in gold, photographically illustrated white dust jacket printed in black and orange and unpriced (as issued). About Fine (bruise to upper right corner with resultant creases to tips of page corners, trivial flaking to spine gold); very minor professional restoration to jacket edge wear and gentle soiling to back panel. An excellent example, tightly bound and clean throughout with bright renditions of the plates. Without the extremely rare original glassine (almost always wanting). Auer, p. 255. Parr & Badger I, p.151. Roth (101 Books), p. 96-97. Most of the images are stills taken during the filming of Olympia (which won Best Foreign Film at the Venice Film Festival after its premiere, in 1938), augmented with 31 behind-the-scenes photos of the production, showing cameras on dollies and tracks, cranes and swivels, submerged in pits and suspended from balloons. "These are such exquisite, such transcendentally beautiful images of athletes, that one almost forgets their context. And it's all Greek temples and hardbodies [sic] until page 54, when the German ...

[publisher: Im Deutschen Verlag, Berlin] Hardcover First Edition First Printing of Riefenstahl's "lavish," controversial photobook, a "masterpiece of the propagandist's art." (Parr & Badger) Royal 8vo (309 x 234mm): 282,[2]pp, complete with 273 full-page gravure plates captioned in German, French, English, Spanish, and Italian. Publisher's burnt orange coarsely woven cloth, spine and upper cover stamped in gold, photographically illustrated white dust jacket printed in black and orange and unpriced (as issued). About Fine (bruise to upper right corner with resultant creases to tips of page corners, trivial flaking to spine gold); very minor professional restoration to jacket edge wear and gentle soiling to back panel. An excellent example, tightly bound and clean throughout with bright renditions of the plates. Without the extremely rare original glassine (almost always wanting). Auer, p. 255. Parr & Badger I, p.151. Roth (101 Books), p. 96-97. Most of the images are stills taken during the filming of Olympia (which won Best Foreign Film at the Venice Film Festival after its premiere, in 1938), augmented with 31 behind-the-scenes photos of the production, showing cameras on dollies and tracks, cranes and swivels, submerged in pits and suspended from balloons. "These are such exquisite, such transcendentally beautiful images of athletes, that one almost forgets their context. And it's all Greek temples and ...

[publisher: Berlin: Deutscher Verlag] Hardcover 280SS. Fast tadelloser, sauberer Zustand. Seltenere erste Auflage, ohne Schutzumschlag. Orange-rötlicher Ganzleinenband mit Goldprägung. 237 spektakuläre Aufnahmen auf Tafeln mit Bildunterschriften, die von Riefenstahl für den meisterhaft-propagandistischen Film "Olympia" gemacht wurden. Sprache: Deutsch Gewicht in Gramm: 2100
[Chemnitz, Germany] [Publication Year: 1937]
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