Today, let’s start with Seydou Keita, I first acknowleged his photography work while i was doing a review for an african art exhibition in Brussels.One of his pictures really caught my attention, the picture seemed less to belong to the 60s than a cover for Details magazine in NYC.Young Seydou became fascinated when once his uncles brought him back a camera from a trip Senegal, he started photographing his relatives and fell truly in love for this art.He spent more and more time with Pierre Garnier- a french photographer- who has his own studio.Up until then, whites had had a lot of trouble convincing local population to have their pictures taken, because they were so afraid to lose their identity.This drives him to open his own studio in 1948. With Keita, it’s different: he is one ofthem and permits them to choose their own picture that will be left for the close family.Slowly he develops his own style, in which one finds accents of Mountaga Kouyaté\’s work, an intellectual that fought a bitter personal battle for the independence of Soedan.If we look beyond the aesthetics of the black-and-white pictures, Seydou shows us a portrait of Malinese society in full transition.
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Posted by kseverny on September 23, 2009 at 4:04 pm
he very talented
Posted by africancontemporaryart on September 23, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Amazing work !