Rittelman to present lecture on Nazi portrait photographer

Dr. Leesa Rittelmann, Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Visual Arts and New Media at SUNY Fredonia, will present a lecture entitled, “Feminism, Fascism and Nazi Photographs of Erna Lendvai-Dircksen.” The talk will take place on Wednesday, April 2, at noon in S104 of the Williams Center. The event is part of the College of Arts and Humanities’ “Brown Bag Lecture Series,” and is free and open to the public.

Rittelmann examines the life and work of an important-yet-neglected Nazi portrait photographer, and considers the difficulties of studying a figure whose work is historically and aesthetically significant but socially oppressive. The talk is designed as a response to the ongoing discourse spawned by Susan Sontag’s 1975 essay “Fascinating Fascism,” which argued that art produced in service of a fascist regime cannot be separated from its propagandistic function. In her analysis of Lendvai-Dircksen’s photographs, Rittelmann will likewise address Sontag’s admonishment of feminist scholars whose work focuses on women artists of the Nazi era.

Professor Rittelmann earned her Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh with concentrations in 20th-century German art and photo-history. In addition to her research on nationalism and the photobook in Weimar and the Third Reich, she has lectured and published on topics as diverse as fetish theory, Victorian American women photographers, new media art, and the role of the silhouette in the work of contemporary Black American artists. She is the co-organizer with Professor Tom Loughlin of this spring’s Arts and Humanities symposium, “Leni’s Legacy: Art, Ethics and Propaganda.”

The Brown Bag Lecture series, sponsored by the College of Arts and Humanities, offers informal talks on the first Wednesday of each month featuring new creative and scholarly work by members of the SUNY Fredonia faculty. Each 30-minute talk and/or presentation is followed by a brief discussion. Free refreshments will be served, and all members of the campus and community are welcome to attend.

For more information on the lecture series, please contact David Kinkela or Natalie Gerber, series directors, at 716-673-3876.