Seydou Keïta Malian, 1921-2001

Seydou Keïta (1921, Bamako, Mali - 2001, Paris) is universally recognized as one of the greatest portrait photographers of the twentieth century and the father of African studio photography. A self-taught carpenter who received a Kodak Brownie from his uncle at fourteen, he opened his Bamako studio in 1948, portraying in a single shot a society on the threshold of independence: thousands of men and women posing with patterned textiles, radios, watches, Vespas and their finest dress, suspended between tradition and modernity. Official photographer of the Malian government from the early 1960s until 1977, he was rediscovered internationally in the early 1990s through André Magnin and Jean Pigozzi. His retrospectives include the Fondation Cartier (1994), the Smithsonian (1996), the Grand Palais, Paris (2016), and the Brooklyn Museum. His works are held in the MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum and LACMA, among many others.