A young man in flared trousers spins his partner across a dance floor. Friends in sunglasses pose by a river with a record player. A couple dances barefoot at a party that has gone on past midnight. These black-and-white photographs, taken in Bamako in the 1960s and 1970s, capture the energy and optimism of young Malians after independence. They are the work of Malick Sidibé, a photographer who went to every party he could and later became one of the most celebrated photographers in the world.
Early life and Studio Malick
Malick Sidibé was born in 1935 in Soloba, a village in southern Mali. He showed talent in drawing and was sent to study art in Bamako. He learned photography working for a French photographer in Bamako in the 1950s. In 1958 he opened his own studio, Studio Malick, in Bamako. He took portraits of local people and repaired cameras.
In the 1960s, young people in Bamako held parties where they danced to rock, soul and Cuban music. Sidibé became the photographer everyone wanted at their party.
Independence and recognition
Mali became independent in 1960. His images capture a generation embracing new freedoms and global culture. On weekends, groups of friends went to the banks of the Niger, and Sidibé went with them, photographing swimming, picnics and posing. His studio portraits, often with striped backdrops and props, show people dressed in their best clothes. In the 1990s, his work was discovered by international curators and exhibited abroad.
In 2007 he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale, the first photographer to receive the honour. He received many other international honours.
Keïta, death and his camera
He is often discussed alongside Seydou Keïta, another Bamako photographer, though Sidibé’s work is known especially for its documentation of youth culture. Malick Sidibé died in Bamako in 2016. He often worked with a small camera at parties, moving among dancers and catching movement and laughter. In the studio he used more formal arrangements, with subjects posing carefully for the lens.
Malick Sidibé took his camera to parties because young people asked him to. The joy he recorded in those rooms now hangs in galleries in cities the dancers never visited.
