The Rocket's Red Glare, Barbara Diener

The Rocket’s Red Glare uses the life of instrumental German rocket scientist, Wernher von Braun, as a metaphor for the selective way history is told. This series challenges the often dual retelling of significant 20th century events, starting in Nazi-era Germany and culminating in the moon landing. Diener’s interest in interpreting this chain of events comes from her own reckoning with history and her complicated German heritage surrounding World War II. Her complex feelings about her heritage are embodied in Wernher von Braun’s story. A Nazi turned NASA scientist, von Braun’s life was filled with as much contradiction as his groundbreaking rockets were, which were used as missiles and spacecraft alike. In 1932, Wernher von Braun went to work for the German army, which fell under National Socialist rule the following year. Accounts of the exact year he joined the Nazi party vary, but by 1937 he was the technical director of the Army Rocket Center in Peenemünde where the V2 rocket (Vengeance Weapon 2) was created and tested. These missiles, which bombed London, were manufactured in an underground factory by slave laborers who endured horrific conditions if they survived. Much of Wernher von Braun’s Nazi past was classified for decades to celebrate his contribution to the U.S. Space Race eg. as the engineer of the Saturn V, the rocket that took man to the moon.
Rather than presenting a complete view of this history, Diener leave intentional holes in the narrative. These gaps serve as questions, looking at how stories pass through generations and how facts are distorted, embellished or undermined.

To create some of the photographs for The Rocket's Red Glare Diener manipulated and retouched archival images, changing how we understand them in the context of time and the records about von Braun's life. She is drawn to the final product for its ambiguity and potential to take on new and unexpected meanings. For example, by removing a figure from its original context and placing it into a different landscape she merges the two places—Germany and the United States—and the two different timelines to create a new representation of geography, truth and national identity.

Published by Fw: Books
Hardcover
255 pages
220 x 300 mm
ISBN: 9789083285887