Look Inside
Which art books, prints and posters are available by and about this artist? Here is a sample of items of interest to a typical collector:
That the beginnings of Malick Sidibé's career as a photographer coincided with Mali's independence from France (in 1960) was serendipitous, and he was certainly the right man to portray the country's postcolonial euphoria. Sidibé focused on the explosion of youth culture and music in 1960s Bamako, photographing all the happening events and ceremonies, including football matches, weddings, Christmas Eve celebrations and parties at clubs like Los Cubanos, Les Caïds, Les Las Vegas, names that convey the influx of Western music into Mali. Visiting as many as five of these venues in one evening, Sidibé would capture Bamako's youth in a close-up snapshot style that conveys the joyful conviviality of this era, and the blending of African and western cultures in dances like the Mali Twist, and in curious combinations of traditional and European clothing. Sidibé would then display his carefully numbered index prints, glued onto administrative folders, on his studio walls for customers, usually the subjects of his photographs, to peruse. These are the "chemises" of this book's title. Chemises surveys what is now a large portion of Sidibé's oeuvre, as much as an invaluable document of 1960s Mali.
Malick Sidibé, Malian, (1936-2016)
Throughout his exuberant, black-and-white portrait photography, Malick Sidibé documented everyday life and youth culture in Bamako, the capital of his native Mali. Sidibé’s stylish scenes captured a period of national growth in the country after its liberation from French colonial rule in 1960. His photographs are both historical records and intimate celebrations of a new national identity.
Sidibé’s work has been exhibited in New York, London, Paris, Rome, Geneva, and Los Angeles. In 2007, the artist became the first African and first photographer to win the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale.
His photographs belong in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the International Center of Photography, and Moderna Museet.
