Soldbuch personal identificaltion photograph: JP, 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg.

My project engages with history, representation, biography, personal narrative, and otherness in the documentary tradition. Each year in Pennsylvania, 500 people come together to reenact the Battle of the Bulge. During the reenactment, I portray Leni Riefenstahl and behave with soldiers, as she would have. I am intrigued by the complex story of a woman with a problematic set of morals. My work aims to understand people beyond the constraints of good vs evil. I have inserted myself into the Nazi reenactor photographs to subvert the viewer’s instinct to dismiss these people as different from themselves. This allows me to reflect upon atrocity, delve into my own relationship with my Jewish heritage, and contemplate the camera’s ability to re-imagine history.

Much of our conception of history is based on images. Historical images have been filtered through media and propaganda. These images become history as generations pass. Images are the dominant force that shape the public imagination. My images of the reenactment are part of the deconstruction process by which images first represent and then replace history.

Soldbuch personal identificaltion photograph: Gary, Panzergrenadier 1st SS LAH. I portray Leni Riefenstahl at WWII reenactments and behave with soldiers as she would have. Tim is the commander of The German 5th Mountain Division. 500 people come together to reenact the Battle of the Bulge each year in January at the Pennsylvania army base, Fort Indiantown Gap. The Battle of the Bulge. The Battle of the Bulge. The Battle of the Bulge. The Battle of the Bulge. The Tiger Tank during the Battle of the Bulge. The reenactors base the authenticity of their looks on images and, in particular, on Riefenstahl?s film, Triumph of the Will. Friulein

The next phase of this project will explore Riefenstahl’s life between 1962-1977 when she lived with the Nuba in Sudan. I will visit the same Nuba tribes to focus on the disjunction between her fetishized images and my own exploration of the Nuba’s complex modern reality. The Nuba were victims of genocide during a recent civil war and it has deeply impacted their culture. They were forcibly relocated to camps and Islamicized. Hundreds of thousands died from warfare and starvation.

My project asks how we live in a world where genocide takes place in continuum? It reflects on the history of the documentary tradition as it poses new ways of expressing identity in relation to ‘otherness’. This project deconstructs the notion of the photograph as document, its power as a tool of propaganda, as a witness to history and a call for change.

Dispatch Leni Riefenstahl shares a meal with Gottfried Dulias, who was a former WW II Luftwaffe pilot and P.O.W. of the Gulan, Russian death camp. The Community Club. Cake. The Community Club. Leni Riefenstahl was known as “the crevasse of the Reich”. Soldbuch personal identification photograph: Albert, 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg. Soldbuch personal identificaltion photograph: Tim, 1st SS Panzergrenadier LAH.

Bio

Stacy Kranitz studied film and photography at New York University. Her work focuses on the ways we express aggression and violence in our daily rituals, habits and pastimes. Additional themes in her work include the relationship between music and culture, the emotional growth of children and environmental racism. She is interested in the theoretical underpinnings that bind together the evolution of the documentary tradition. Her work looks to explore important social issues while commenting on this tradition and challenging its boundaries.

Her clients include Adbusters, Dwell, Elle, ESPN, Entertainment Weekly, Forbes, Fortune, Men’s Journal, Mother Jones, Metropolis, Newsweek, New York Times Magazine, People, Rolling Stone, Spin, Vice, Wall Street Journal and Wired.

She was awarded a Young Photographers Alliance Scholarship Award and also received a Story Project Grant from the California Council for the Humanities. She has shown her work at galleries in NY, CA, LA and FL.

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Stacy Kranitz