Publication: Fotografía, voluntad e incertidumbre
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2006
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Universidad Complutense, Departamento de Comunicación Audiovisual y Publicidad I
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Abstract
En este artículo se traza un parangón entre la obra fotográfica (fija y en movimiento)
de Leni Riefensthal y el pensamiento del físico cuántico Werner Heisenberg. Ambos
autores son coetáneos, y guardan en común el servicio prestado al régimen nacionalsocialista de la Alemania nazi. Una, con la producción de una obra gráfica
idealizadora del pueblo ario y de sus líderes; el otro, poniendo a disposición de su país
su experiencia y conocimientos científicos a la hora de desarrollar la bomba atómica
alemana. Sin embargo, en esta ocasión se atiende mayormente al substrato
intelectual y estético subyacente en sus obras, antes que a sus biografías. Y es la
fotografía el elemento que nos sirve para analizar esta coincidencia de miras y de
actitudes estéticas y filosóficas. Mientras que en el caso de la fotógrafo y cineasta es el
tono grandilocuente y altivo de su obra lo que resalta, en consonancia con la aguda
observación de Walter Benjamin de la estetizoción que hace el fascismo de la política;
en el caso del insigne físico, lo que destaca son sus conclusiones de carácter
neoplatónico a raíz de la formulación de sus famosas relaciones de incertidumbre , que
se deben sorprendentemente a una serie de reflexiones hechas en torno a las
fotografías del trazo de las partículas atómicas tal como se manifiestan en la cámara
de niebla. Ciencia y arte se dan la mano en la trastienda del pensamiento, a través de
un instrumento tan moderno como es el fotográfico. Expresión y conocimiento, las dos
potencialidades más destacables de la cámara, encuentran un punto en común en el
pensamiento y estética sublimadores de la realidad de estos dos autores alemanes. La esencia del pueblo alemán, retratada por medio de atletas apolíneos, de voces
altivas y decorados grandilocuentes de mármol y granito, como rememoración de
aquel arte clásico grecolatino, regido por cánones geométricos, y aquí entendido de
cartón piedra, tiende la mano al principio de indeterminación, verdadera espada de
Damocles suspendida sobre la cabeza de la física moderna, e interpretado por el físico
alemán como un baluarte de las relaciones formales, puras y geométricas, que
definen la esencia del mundo y de las cosas. La fotografía, de ser un instrumento de
observación positivista al servicio de la ciencia del siglo XIX, pasó a ser cuestionada,
junto a sus productos, por un nuevo idealismo que demostraba su fuerza arrolladora y salvaje tanto en la ciencia y el arte como en la política del siglo XX.
This article establishes a relationship between the photographic work (films and photography) of Leni Riefensthal and the philosophical ideas of the quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg.. These authors are contemporaries and hove in common their service to the National Socialist party in Germany. The first, through the production of an idealizing graphical work of an Aryan people and its leaders; the second, by helping the German atomic bomb project with his scientific experience and knowledge. On this occasion however we look into their intellectual and aesthetic principies rather than at their personal biographies. Photography is the element which helps us analyse a conc urrence in their artistic and philosophical outlook and attitudes. While in the case of the photographer and filmmaker Leni Riefensthal it is pomposity and arrogance which best defines her work, in accordance with Walter Benjamin 's observation of political aesthetication by fascism: in the case of the notorious physicist, his neoplatonic conc/usions as a result of his famous uncertainty relations stand out. The latter is surprisingly related to sorne observations he made after taking into consideration a number of c/oud chamber photographs of atomic portie/es. Science and art encounter each other behind thought through the modern instrument of photography. Expression and knowledge, the two m ost outstanding potentialities of the camera, find a common ground in the subliminal thinking and aesthetics of these two German authors. The essence of the German people, portrayed in film by Leni Riefensthal as Apol/onian athletes, haughty voices and grandiloquent statues of marble and granite in remembrance of c/assical Greco-latin art, ruled by geometric cannons, but understood here as cardboard work, stretches its hand to the uncertainty principie, as a truly Damoc/es sword suspended over the head of modern physics, and interpreted by Heisenberg as a bastion of those formal relationships, pure and geometric, which define the world and the essence of things. Photography and its products, after being a positivist observational instrument at the service of XIX century science, were questioned by this new idealism which showed its savage force in XX century art, science and politics.
This article establishes a relationship between the photographic work (films and photography) of Leni Riefensthal and the philosophical ideas of the quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg.. These authors are contemporaries and hove in common their service to the National Socialist party in Germany. The first, through the production of an idealizing graphical work of an Aryan people and its leaders; the second, by helping the German atomic bomb project with his scientific experience and knowledge. On this occasion however we look into their intellectual and aesthetic principies rather than at their personal biographies. Photography is the element which helps us analyse a conc urrence in their artistic and philosophical outlook and attitudes. While in the case of the photographer and filmmaker Leni Riefensthal it is pomposity and arrogance which best defines her work, in accordance with Walter Benjamin 's observation of political aesthetication by fascism: in the case of the notorious physicist, his neoplatonic conc/usions as a result of his famous uncertainty relations stand out. The latter is surprisingly related to sorne observations he made after taking into consideration a number of c/oud chamber photographs of atomic portie/es. Science and art encounter each other behind thought through the modern instrument of photography. Expression and knowledge, the two m ost outstanding potentialities of the camera, find a common ground in the subliminal thinking and aesthetics of these two German authors. The essence of the German people, portrayed in film by Leni Riefensthal as Apol/onian athletes, haughty voices and grandiloquent statues of marble and granite in remembrance of c/assical Greco-latin art, ruled by geometric cannons, but understood here as cardboard work, stretches its hand to the uncertainty principie, as a truly Damoc/es sword suspended over the head of modern physics, and interpreted by Heisenberg as a bastion of those formal relationships, pure and geometric, which define the world and the essence of things. Photography and its products, after being a positivist observational instrument at the service of XIX century science, were questioned by this new idealism which showed its savage force in XX century art, science and politics.
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Keywords
Photography, Physics, Uncertaintity relations, Ideology, Fotografía, Riefensthal, Heisenberg, Física, Relaciones de indeterminación, Ideología
Bibliographic citation
Área Abierta. N. 14 (2006), pp. 3-11