Holding Missle, Peenemünde, 1940/2019 © Barbara Diener
Photographer Barbara Diener's The Rocket's Red Glare Untangles a Convoluted History
As teenagers in the 1920s, a time when space travel was limited to science fiction novels, Wernher von Braun in Germany and Jack Parsons in Pasadena, CA shared an intercontinental rocket science correspondence. Talking for hours on the phone, they exchanged ideas, tips, and notes from experiments on everything from explosions to home-engineered rocket fuel tests. Into adulthood, they went on separate paths.
In 1932, Braun began working for the German Army just before the country fell under Nazi rule, and Parsons quickly severed ties. Parsons made significant contributions to the development of rocket fuel and was part of the famous rocket building Suicide Squad at CalTech, but was later written out of much of NASA's history because of his involvement with Aleister Crowley's occult religion. Meanwhile, the US government recruited Braun who later developed the Saturn V rocket for NASA
Barbara Diener’s The Rocket’s Red Glare combines found photographs and other archival materials from the period with her own photographs to create a meandering alternative narrative of the two scientists' work and relationship. Aerials of rocket testing sites volley with portraits of male and female actors Diener hired to stand in for Parsons, as well as (glasses required) 3D photographs of martian landscapes. Diener’s nonlinear mix of old and new creates a disjointed yet effective story of a period in history to which most viewers are likely unaware.
Intrigued and confused, I spoke with Diener to dig through her strange historical revision.
Jon Feinstein in conversation with Barbara Diener
© Barbara Diener
Jon Feinstein: Before I really spend time with this work, I have to say this is a crazy compelling and intriguing parallel history. I’m not sure how much of it I understand (yet). Where to begin? What gave you the idea for this series?
Barbara Diener: I have been interested in Wernher von Braun and Operation Paperclip for a while. Operation Paperclip was a CIA lead initiative, that secured and extracted German Nazi scientists, including von Braun, after World War II and brought them to the U.S. to work for the military.
To give some personal context, I was born and raised in Germany. My father, who passed away in 2007, was a young boy during WWII. It was always hard for him to talk about any details regarding the war and therefore hard for me to know exactly where my family fit into that historical moment. As far as I know, my grandfather and uncle did not actually join the Nazi party but both fought on the German side. My uncle was wounded at the very end of the war and died of his injuries. He had just turned 18.
Saturn I at Night, Huntsville, AL, 2019. © Barbara Diener
Feinstein: Oh, wow! I think this could go down a rabbit hole (which I’d love to discuss in another context at some point!) - can you share some details about the two scientists and the history this series is based on?
Diener: Wernher von Braun’s story, and some of his rocket team’s, encapsulate a lot of the things I am trying to unpack with this project. So much documentation was destroyed or classified for decades. In late 1932 Wernher von Braun went to work for the German army, which fell under National Socialist rule the following year.
Accounts as to when he joined the NAZI party vary but by 1937 he was the technical director of the Army Rocket Center in Peenemünde where the V2 (Vengeance Weapon 2) was created and tested. He was also a Untersturmführer in the SS. After the war he settled in Huntsville, AL with many of his original German rocket team where they eventually developed the Saturn V and put the first man on the moon.
Nazi May Day Celebration, 1938/2019 © Barbara Diener
Feinstein: Given the convoluted history of all of this, how deep has your research gone? Can you tell me a bit more about the history?
Diener: I have spoken to some of the children of the other rocket team members, who still live in Huntsville. Their stories are all fascinating and to simplify and sum them up a little for the purpose of this interview, they experienced variations of the following: A young scientist with a wife and small children is sent to the Eastern Front and wounded. Upon his return home, the entire family is sent to Peenemünde, so the husband can work with von Braun.
In my research for my previous body of work, Phantom Power, the name Jack Parsons kept coming up because of his involvement with the occult and sex magic. Parsons became a member of the Los Angeles chapter of Ordo Templi Orientis, which was lead by none other than Aleister Crowley. Parsons also had ties to pre-Scientology L. Ron Hubbard—Parsons’ primary romantic partner, his first wife’s younger sister, left him and married Hubbard. Although he never attended CalTech he spearheaded the self-proclaimed “Suicide Squad”, a group of CalTech students, who shared Parsons love for rocketry.
Eray Playing Jack, Arroyo Seco, Pasadena, CA. 2019. © Barbara Diener
Diener (continued) In 1936 these founders of what would become the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA conducted their first rocket tests in the Arroyo Seco, and were soon after commissioned by the U.S. Army Air Corps to develop “jet-assisted take-off” rockets. In 1942 Parsons co-founded the rocket and missile manufacturer Aerojet but by 1944 he was bought out and his affiliations with military and government projects were terminated. Parsons died tragically from fatal injuries after a presumed accidental explosion in his home laboratory.
I started digging into both von Braun’s and Parsons’ stories separately but simultaneously. At first, I did not know that there was a concrete link between them. I was looking at the type of person that it takes to want to go to the moon and conquer space. They were both eccentric, driven, self-centered and had dreamed of going to the moon when space travel was confined to science-fiction novels. In my mind there was a link between them purely based on their personalities. I was thrilled to find out that they actually knew each other and, as teenagers, had talked on the phone about their experiments. This was in the 1920s and they were both members of their respective rocket clubs.
At that point it became clear that I needed to explore this!
Dr. von Braun’s First US Drivers License Certificate. 1946/ 2019. © Barbara Diener
Feinstein: I see this as a Netflix miniseries. A novel. A strange Hulu documentary. Why, for you (aside from the obvious - you’re a photographer) did photography feel like the medium to explore this story and history?
Diener: Unfortunately, Parsons’ story is the subject of a really bad CBS bio-pic series, Strange Angel, adapted from a really good biography of the same name by George Pendle. This book was a great resource to me. There’s been documentaries about Operation Paperclip but they are super sensational, like NAZI Mega-Weapons and other History Channel programs.
I could see this project evolving into an experimental, contemporary documentary film or at least having an A/V component to it. For now, my choice of using still images mirrors the complex and fragmented nature of these two stories. One photograph, while it may have narrative qualities, can’t inherently contain a beginning, middle and end in one frame. The single frames invite the viewer to make their own connections between the disparate images.
Rocket Test, Mojave Desert. 1942/ 2019 © Barbara Diener
Wernher von Braun’s Astronomy Manuscript, Written at Age 15. 1927/ 2019. © Barbara Diener
Feinstein: Like your earlier series, this work plays on truth, history and a blurring of fact and fiction…
Diener: Absolutely! It is nothing new to approach history, and the way it has been disseminated, as something malleable rather than fixed. We now consider the voices of minorities and underrepresented communities (current state of this country aside) and are able to have a much richer and more nuanced understanding of historical events. For both Wernher von Braun and Jack Parsons there are facts but also many unknowns. Within these unknowns I am searching for Truths.
Feinstein: Building on that, I’m interested in your use of primary sources, found material, etc. This practice/method is something that’s been in and out of vogue as a device for storytelling in the art/photo world over the past few decades. I think of Joan Fontcuberta, Christian Patterson and many others.
Diener: Yeah, I used to joke that I just need to find my teenage runaway/shooting spree story. [in reference to Christian Patterson’s Redheaded Peckerwood]. Maybe this is it? I honestly tried really hard to resist incorporating historical photographs into this work but then I came across some images that were just too good to spend the rest of their existence gathering dust in an archive. I had to do something with them. Similarly, I was blown away by the ephemera in the Wernher von Braun Archive in Huntsville, AL, which included his high school math notebooks, a manuscript for an astronomy book he wrote at age 15, handwritten drafts for speeches, driver’s license etc. In addition to their historical relevance, they also helped me tell von Braun’s story.
Coming across imagery of Swastikas has a nauseating, repulsive effect on me. It is still jarring symbolism for me since swastikas are illegal in Germany. So, when I found the prints that I re-photographed for Funeral for Victims of Air Raid, Peenemünde, Germany and NAZI May Day Celebration it seemed important and poignant to include them. I was trying to figure out how to address the overt link to Nazism and finding these photographs felt like a way of doing that.
Neutral Buoyancy Simulator, 2019. © Barbara Diener
Building The Mars 2020 Rover. Jet Propulsion Laboratory., CA. 2019. © Barbara Diener
Feinstein: This might sound obvious, but I’m guessing there’s a level of homage to Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel’s Evidence?
Diener: I think I speak for everyone who knew Larry, and certainly for those of us who had the incredible honor of studying with him, that he changed the way one thinks about photographs. Evidence certainly crossed my mind while making this work and I think it is impossible to incorporate any kind of historical imagery without a nod to that seminal work.
A parallel between The Rocket's Red Glare and Evidence would be that moment when one discovers an arresting photo, striped from its original context, in a possibly forgotten archive, and thinks: "Oh my god, this is bananas. Everyone has to see this!"
Endeavor, 2019. © Barbara Diener
“Suicide Squad,” Arroyo Seco, Pasadena, CA 1936/ 2019 © Barbara Diener
Feinstein: I can’t stop staring at “Holding Missile” (the header image for this interview - scroll back to the beginning, dear readers!). What’s the story behind this image?
Diener: The photograph of the man holding what looks like a small rocket is one of those images that I found in the von Braun Archive. It was so striking and prompted questions: Who is this young man? What is he holding exactly, and why? What role did he play in the context of the larger history? Did Wernher von Braun pose him? Presumably, this image was from von Braun’s personal collection of photos he brought over from Germany.
Feinstein: But you also doctored it, right?
Diener: I made the background photograph on my first trip for this project out to California. It was already monochromatic and a little eerie, so superimposing those two images felt very natural. I am drawn to the final product for its ambiguity and mystery. By removing the figure from its original context and placing it into a different landscape I am literally merging the two places, Germany and California, and the two different timelines to create a new Truth.
Viktoria Playing Jack, Griffith Park, Los Angeles, CA, 2019. © Barbara Diener
Feinstein: A piece of this series is having people dress up as the original scientists. What’s your thinking behind this? Who are the “actors” / what’s your relationship to them / the significance?
Diener: Wernher von Braun was an extremely public and much-photographed figure, however there are not that many images of Jack Parsons that have survived. I became obsessed with this one photo of Parsons wearing a long black coat, standing in the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena, CA, where the “Suicide Squad’s” first rocket tests took place. That was the inspiration for these portraits. I found the subjects through Model Mayhem, Instagram, or Craigslist, so I do not know them personally.
I photographed them in that original location or in some cases in Griffith Park, which looks similar, and I posed them in either a black coat, white shirt or vest. I associated these items of clothing with Parsons based on things I read and other photographs I have seen of him. To complicate this idea of re-staging or re-creating further it was important to me to photograph women, as well.
Funeral for Victims of Air Raid, Peenemünde, Germany. 1943/ 2019 © Barbara Diener
Feinstein: As this work is grounded in WW2 politics, Nazism, etc do you see it responding to our current time of crisis/ the rise of authoritarianism around the world?
Diener: Tangentially yes. This work was made in a time of ambient totalitarian tendencies. By examining a historical event that took place decades ago, I am drawing attention to how we are documenting this current moment. Looking at Operation Paperclip for example, which was classified for upwards of 40 years, my work addresses the obscuring of information, whether that be by the media, government, or intelligence agencies. Once Operation Paperclip was declassified, it furthered a deep mistrust of the government in the American people. The Rocket’s Red Glare interrogates the writers of history and subsequently challenges the readers to question said history.
My generation of Germans still grew up with a lot of guilt, shame, denial, and disbelief of the National Socialist regime. How could we, as a country, let that happen? I personally refuse to attribute Trump with the same power that Hitler had. However, let’s not let history repeat itself.
Tangled Trees (Winter), Monto Sane State Park, Alabama, 2019. © Barbara Diener
Feinstein: There are a few photos in this series that seem to be subtle nods to your earlier work. The Tangled Trees photo, pictured above, for example. I almost see specters in them. Would you agree?
Diener: Yes, I guess I am still chasing ghosts, which functions nicely as a metaphor for finding historical truth. Even if we can base much of our knowledge on facts, there are stories that have not been told and facts that have been omitted.
3D Mars Landscape, Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Pasadena, CA. 2019. © Barbara Diener
Feinstein: Where are you in all of this?
Diener: I grew up 8 miles from the Felsennest, Hitler’s bunker on the Western Front. Until recently, I did not know that this bunker existed. Or maybe more accurately, I can’t remember if I knew or not. It seems like a place for field trips or certainly something that was mentioned in history class. But I just don’t remember ever hearing about it. I remember learning facts and figures about World War II over and over again but there was a lack of something more tangible.
My point here is, I will always feel personally invested in finding new ways to recount a story and to complicate what we think we know. Sometimes, juxtaposing two very different lives that have one common thread, can pose unexpected questions and force us to look at the way that history is passed on through generations, and how facts are distorted, embellished, or undermined.