The remarkable story of Seydou Keïta's rise from obscurity to international acclaim began in 1991, when Jean Pigozzi and André Magnin discovered the uncredited photographs of this then-unknown Malian photographer while visiting the exhibition "Africa Explores, 20th Century African Art" at The Center for African Art in New York. At the time, Keïta was completely unknown outside sub-Saharan Africa, despite having created some of the most striking portrait photography of the 20th century.
Determined to identify the mysterious photographer behind these captivating images, the two men launched an intensive search that would ultimately change art history. At Jean Pigozzi's insistence, André Magnin traveled to Mali for the first time, armed with reproductions of the photographs they had discovered. His driver took him directly to the house of Malick Sidibé (1935-2016), who was then the best-known photographer in Bamako. Upon seeing the reproductions Magnin had brought with him, Sidibé immediately exclaimed, "That's by Keïta! He's still there, in Bamako-Coura, behind the main prison."
Seydou Keïta, who was born in 1921 in Bamako and died in Paris in 2001, had retired from photography in 1977 and was completely taken by surprise when someone had traveled so far because of his work—thirty years after he had closed his studio. His meeting with André Magnin, and subsequently with Jean Pigozzi, would prove to be life-changing. Three years later, in 1994, this encounter led to the photographer's first solo exhibition at the prestigious Fondation Cartier in Paris, France.
Until that pivotal moment, Keïta had only seen his works in the form of contact prints he made from his negatives. The experience of seeing his photographs properly printed for the first time was deeply moving for the artist. He later admitted, "You cannot imagine how moved I was the first time I saw the prints made from my large format negatives—flawless, clean, perfect. It was then that I understood that my work was really, really good. The people in the photos seemed so alive. It was almost as if they were standing in front of me in flesh and blood."
This profound reaction demonstrates Keïta's exceptional ability to see and capture individuality, as art critic Robert Storr points out in his essay on the photographer titled "Limmortalité en un déclic" (Immortality in a Click). Storr highlighted a distinctive practice that Keïta had established from the very beginning of his career in 1948: taking only a single shot for each of his individual or group portraits. This approach was partly born from economic necessity, as photographic paper was both rare and expensive in Bamako during the 1950s, but it also reflected his innate sense of how to find the perfect pose and composition.
This unique one-shot methodology quickly set Keïta apart from other African photographers practicing in Mali at the time. The photographer himself explained the secret behind his success with clients: "According to him, technically, photography is simple, but what made the difference was that I knew how to find the right position, I never got it wrong. The face just turned away, the gaze being really important, the placing and position of the hands. I could make anyone look better. In the end, the photos came out really well. That's why I say that it's art."
Keïta understood that he constantly needed to innovate to satisfy his sophisticated clientele, as having one's photograph taken was still considered a significant event in Mali and throughout West Africa during that era. Through his innovations in accessories, poses, and materials, Keïta anticipated his clients' desires and allowed them to transform into who they wanted to be in front of the camera. The concept of transcending one's social status through a photographic portrait held tremendous power during this period.
Keïta was among the first photographers to give expression to this aspiration by offering an extensive range of accessories. In his studio, clients could dress up from head to toe, making themselves elegant or adopting European styles—something that particularly resonated with many men in Bamako. Women, while always stylish, more often maintained their traditional sartorial choices. This preference perhaps demonstrated that they saw themselves as guardians of African traditions within Mali's urban communities, even as significant social changes were taking place around them.
The photographer's studio contained an impressive collection of objects that symbolized modern life: watches, pens, telephones, alarm clocks, and other treasures that, when combined with women's makeup, served as outward signs of prosperity, beauty, or elegance. Some clients chose to pose with bicycles, scooters, or near cars—including vehicles that Keïta had purchased with proceeds from his successful studio business. These automobiles, normally associated with white colonials, allowed Africans to temporarily enjoy the privileges and status symbols of the colonial elite during their photographic sessions.
Music represented another crucial accessory in Keïta's photographic compositions, often appearing in the form of radio sets integrated into his portraits. Young clients who selected this symbol of the modern West were demonstrating to their community that they remained informed about current events and the latest musical trends. Rhythm manifested itself in yet another unexpected way through Keïta's masterful use of patterned materials that brought remarkable life and vitality to the surface of his images.
Seydou Keïta's greatest innovation involved his use of fabric rolls purchased in Bamako's markets, which he hung in front of the adobe wall in his studio courtyard. From 1948 to 1954, a fringed bedcover served as his primary background. Later, he employed several different fabrics, selecting them specifically for the graphic power of their patterns and typically using each set for between two and four years. These distinctive backgrounds later enabled art historians to accurately date his photographs.
One of the finest examples of Keïta's masterful use of fabrics was exhibited at the Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Brussels, featuring two women who appear to float gracefully in a sea of geometric motifs. According to art critic Dan Leers, this layering technique achieves two important objectives: compositionally, it creates a dynamic visual movement that keeps the viewer's eye engaged within the image frame, while artistically, it adapts an established European tradition to the specific cultural reality of Mali.
While there are precedents for Keïta's technique in photography, similar approaches can also be found in painting, particularly among the Nabis movement. Pierre Bonnard's colleague Édouard Vuillard, for instance, employed the superposition and blending of motifs and patterns in his paintings. However, any claims that Keïta's compositions or poses were borrowed from paintings, such as those depicting odalisques, are entirely without foundation. Seydou Keïta consistently stated throughout his life that he never owned any art books or saw any photographs that could have influenced his artistic development.
The only external factors that contributed to his work were purely technical in nature. Nevertheless, his body of work is now recognized as an integral part of photography's history in Mali and throughout West Africa, where a significant wave of African studio photographers emerged following the end of World War II and continued until the 1960s. This movement represented a crucial period in African visual culture, documenting the continent's transition from colonial rule to independence.
The exhibition "Seydou Keïta" ran through January 14, 2017, at Galerie Nathalie Obadia, located at Rue Charles Decoster 8, 1050 Ixelles, Belgium. This presentation offered visitors a rare opportunity to experience firsthand the extraordinary vision of a photographer who transformed portrait photography in Africa and whose influence continues to resonate in contemporary art today.
