Malick Sidibe, Bamako, 2002
Malick Sidibe (born 1936 – April 14, 2016) was a Malian photographer noted for his black-and-white studies of popular culture in the 1960s in Bamako. During his life, Sidibé gained an international reputation and was considered, along with Seydou Keïta, to be Mali’s most famous photographer and one of the masters of African Photography.
His work was the subject of a number of publications and exhibited throughout Europe and the United States. In 2007, he received a Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement at Venice Biennale,[6] becoming both the first photographer[4] and the first African so recognized.[7] Other awards he received included a Hasselblad Award for photography,[8] an International Center of PhotographyInfinity Award for Lifetime Achievement,[9] and a World Press Photo award.[10] Sidibé’s work is held in the collections of The Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC),[11] the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles,[12] and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.[13]
Malick Sidibe : Early Life
Sidibé’s studio in Bamako showing his cameras and equipment
Sidibé was born in the village of Soloba, 300 km from Bamako, in Mali. From the age of five or six, he began herding animals and working the land. He became the first member of his family to attend school after he was chosen by the village chief to be sent to the white school in Yanfolila for an education.[5] During his first year he became interested in art and by high school, he was doing drawings for official events. It was his skill in charcoal drawings that drew much attention to his talent and led to his selection for the Institut National des Arts de Bamakoin the capital city of Bamako.[5] While at this school, he was noticed by photographer Gérard Guillat-Guignard, who became a mentor and from whom, through close observation and practice, Malick Sidibe learned the craft of photography.[5]
A pioneer of African photography:
In 1952 Malick Sidibe moved to Bamako. In 1955, he undertook an apprenticeship at Guillat-Guignard’s Photo Service Boutique, also known as Gégé la pellicule. In 1956 he bought his first camera, a Brownie Flash, and in 1957 became a full-time photographer, opening his own studio (Studio Malick) in Bamako in 1958. He specialized in documentary photography, focusing particularly on the youth culture of the Malian capital.[14] Sidibé took photographs at sport events, the beach, nightclubs, concerts, and even tagged along while the young men seduced girls.[3][7] He increasingly became noted for his black-and-white studies of popular culture in the 1960s in Bamako. In the 1970s, Sidibé turned towards the making of studio portraits. His background in drawing became useful:
As a rule, when I was working in the studio, I did a lot of the positioning. As I have a background in drawing, I was able to set up certain positions in my portraits. I didn’t want my subjects to look like mummies. I would give them positions that brought something alive in them.[9]
Sidibé was discovered for an international audience thanks to the photographer Françoise Huguier, who worked with André Magnin, a curator who had been sent to West Africa by a French collector, Jean Pigozzi, in the 1990s.[5] One of the best known of Sidibé’s works from that time is Nuit de Noel, Happy Club (Christmas Eve, Happy Club) (1963), depicting a smiling couple — the man in a suit, the woman in a Western party dress (but barefoot) and both dancing, presumably, to music.[14] And it was images like these that revealed how Malick Sidibé’s photographic style was inextricably linked to music. This connection is something that Sidibé had spoken about during interviews, over the years.[15]
“We were entering a new era, and people wanted to dance. Music freed us. Suddenly, young men could get close to young women, hold them in their hands. Before, it was not allowed. And everyone wanted to be photographed dancing up close.”[4]
It is perhaps no surprise that other Malian artists, such as the musicians Salif Keita and Ali Farka Touré, also came to international attention in the 1990s at almost the same moment as Malian photography was being recognized.[16][17]
“Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, in graphic, vigorous, black-and-white pictures, Sidibé captured the dynamism and joy of a rapidly changing West Africa. In particular, he honed in on the vernaculars of style: the brash suits, the purposefully clashing prints, the girls pairing their headdresses with their cat-eye shades, the little kids in full tribal costume and face paint, the dancers kicking off their shoes. The party, the club, the dance floor—these were his settings, the places where people came to be seen and dressed the part. From midnight till dawn, Sidibé roamed the city, party-hopping, shooting hundreds of frames every weekend.”[18]
Malick Sidibe : the awards and international recognition
The Grammy award-winning video of Janet Jackson’s 1997 song “Got ’til It’s Gone” is strongly indebted to the photographic style of Sidibé,[19] and the video pays tribute to a particular time (during the 1960s and 70s)[20][21]that Sidibé’s pictures had helped to document. This was the time period just after the French Sudan (and then the Mali Federation) had gained their Independence from France in 1960.[22] This new era (post-1960) has, subsequently, been characterized by various observers as a post-colonial (and post-apartheid) awakening of consciousness. Many of those who admire Sidibé’s work believe that he somehow captured the joy and wonder of this awakening, and that it is seen in the faces, scenes, and images that he helped to illuminate.[15][23][24] More recently, Sidibé’s influence can be seen directly through Inna Modja’s 2015 video for her song “Tombouctou,”[3][24]as it was filmed in Sidibé’s photography studio.
In 2006, Tigerlily Films made a documentary entitled Dolce Vita Africana about Sidibé, filming him at work in his studio in Bamako, having a reunion with many of his friends (and former photographic subjects) from his younger days, and speaking to him about his work.[25]
Sidibé became the first African and the first photographer to be awarded the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2007. Robert Storr, the show’s artistic director, said:
“
No African artist has done more to enhance photography’s stature in the region, contribute to its history, enrich its image archive or increase our awareness of the textures and transformations of African culture in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st than Malick Sidibé.[6]
”
Sidibé died[20] of complications from diabetes in Bamako.[4][26] He was survived by 17 children and three wives.[27]