Seydou Keita’s thousands of portraits are an exceptional witness to society in Mali between the late ’40s and the early ’60s. These are photographs which have become, beyond their sociological interest, an incontestable work of tricks, eccentricities and illusions giving them objective character and a timeless dimension.
Seydou Keita intuitively invented or reinvented the portrait through the search for extreme precision, naturally making a place for himself in the history of world photography.
The importance of Seydou Keita’s works is uncontestable in terms of the number – more than 3000 – and quality of the negatives he produced. He was a “mystic of photography” who rapidly assimilates all the photographic techniques, and this mysticism drove him to portray the people of Bamako with obstinacy and without changing his viewpoint. Young and old, rich and poor, soldiers and guardians of the republic, all posing solely in order to see their own image fixed in such a special form, the “photo”.
Seydou Keita’s thousands of portraits are an exceptional witness to society in Mali between the late ’40s and the early ’60s. These are photographs which have become, beyond their sociological interest, an incontestable work of tricks, eccentricities and illusions giving them objective character and a timeless dimension.
Seydou Keita intuitively invented or reinvented the portrait through the search for extreme precision, naturally making a place for himself in the history of world photography.
The importance of Seydou Keita’s works is uncontestable in terms of the number – more than 3000 – and quality of the negatives he produced. He was a “mystic of photography” who rapidly assimilates all the photographic techniques, and this mysticism drove him to portray the people of Bamako with obstinacy and without changing his viewpoint. Young and old, rich and poor, soldiers and guardians of the republic, all posing solely in order to see their own image fixed in such a special form, the “photo”.