She was the first white female photographer who had obtained a special permission by the Sudanese government to do her research in the remote Nuba mountains of Sudan.

[6] Shortly after its 1974 release in America, the critic Susan Sontag scrutinized the "fascist aesthetics" of the works in her essay "Fascinating Fascism".

Writing in the New York Review of Books in 1975, she stated: "The fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets".

All the pictures bring us the physical beauty of the people: a young girl, shy and mischievous of face, with a bead sewn into her lower lip like a permanent cinnamon drop; a wrestler prepared for his match, with his shaven head turned to look over the massive shoulder, all skin color taken away by a coating of ashes.Academic studies, giving critical appraisals of Riefenstahl's books on the Nuba people, have been published by Alexandra Ludewig of the University of Western Australia[9] and by anthropologist James C. Faris of the University of Connecticut.

[11] Another examination of both Riefenstahl's books and of James C. Faris's criticism was undertaken as a comment on a television film, called The Nuba from the BBC “Worlds Apart” ethnographic series.