{"id":7962,"date":"2022-01-13T17:38:46","date_gmt":"2022-01-13T20:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/?p=7962"},"modified":"2022-01-23T17:17:17","modified_gmt":"2022-01-23T20:17:17","slug":"the-great-african-portraitist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/en\/essays\/the-great-african-portraitist","title":{"rendered":"The great African portraitist"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Photographs: Seydou Ke\u00efta\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/h2>\r\n

Text: Alexander Stuparich<\/b><\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Seydou Ke\u00efta was born around 1921 in Bamako, the capital of the Republic of Mali. A self-taught photographer, his portraits earned him a reputation for excellence throughout West Africa. Inventive and highly modern, his emphasis on the essential components of portrait photography\u2014light, subject, framing\u2014firmly establishes Ke\u00efta among the 20th-century masters of the genre.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\r\n

Flipbook version<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

Seydou Ke\u00efta\u2019s photographs eloquently portray Bamako society during its era of transition from a cosmopolitan French colony to an independent capital. Initially trained to follow his father\u2019s carpenter trade, Ke\u00efta\u2019s career as a photographer was launched in 1935 by an uncle who gave him his first camera, a Kodak Brownie Flash, which he had bought during a trip to Senegal. During his adolescence, Ke\u00efta mastered the technical challenges of working with light and printing. After the initial apprenticeship of him photographing his family, friends, and his father\u2019s clients, Ke\u00efta set up an open-air studio in another family\u2019s yard, where he was renting a room.<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\"\"
Untitled, 1952\/55, Modern gelatin silver print. \u00a9 Seydou Ke\u00efta\/SKPEAC, courtesy The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

In the following decade he bought two more cameras and in 1948 he acquired a used 13×18 inch camera with a broken shutter. The larger format not only offered an exceptional degree of resolution but also made it possible for Ke\u00efta to make high-quality contact prints without the aid of an enlarger. Primarily lit by sunlight, all of his portraits from 1949 to 1962 were taken with this camera, which Ke\u00efta mastered by removing the lens cap for a precise period of time to properly expose the film. For economic reasons, he only took one shot to achieve each photograph. His numerous clients were attracted by the quality of his photographs and his great sense of aesthetics. Many were young men, dressed in European-style clothing. Some clients bought items they wanted to be photographed with, but Ke\u00efta also had a selection of European clothing and accessories that he made available to them in his studio. Women arrived in loose robes that often covered their legs and neck, only beginning to wear Western attire in the late 1960s.<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\"\"
Untitled, 1948\/54, Modern gelatin silver print. \u00a9 Seydou Ke\u00efta\/SKPEAC, courtesy The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

To promote his business, he stamped \u201cPhoto Ke\u00efta Seydou\u201d on the back of the pictures and hired assistants to go looking for new customers at the nearby market and train station. By 1952 his studio in Bamako was already a successful business, establishing him as a locally renowned portraitist. Serving elite and middle-class clients, his images often highlight the idealised or imagined socioeconomic status of his models by including accessories: cosmopolitan clothing and objects, radios, telephones, bicycles, watches, pens, motorcycles, and sometimes, his own car.<\/p>\r\n

He would renew these accessories every few years, which later allowed him to establish a chronology of his work. To formalise the outdoor setting, Ke\u00efta regularly employed richly patterned backgrounds that add movement and visual energy to the images. He used a low point of view and angular composition to highlight the confident facial expressions and relaxed postures of his clients. Parallel to his studio practice, Ke\u00efta visited people\u2019s homes to compose portraits and travelled to rural villages to take identification photographs.<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\"\"
Untitled, 1953\/57, Modern gelatin silver print. \u00a9 Seydou Ke\u00efta\/SKPEAC, courtesy The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

The year 1960 is the end of the colonial era for the region and Mali becomes independent from France. An independent, socialist Africanist-oriented one-party state with strong ties to the Soviet Union was established, which carried out extensive nationalisation of economic resources. The newly installed socialist government appoints Ke\u00efta as its official photographer. Ke\u00efta starts working for the government and his first assignment is to take mug shots of the prisoners at the police headquarters. (These images were allegedly destroyed in a fire during skirmishes of a coup.)<\/p>\r\n

Meanwhile, the study remained in the hands of his brother Lacina, his son Mamadou and the assistants Abdoulaye and Mouris. However, with the growing economic deterioration and scarcity of goods and services typical of socialism, the business faltered. When Ke\u00efta finally retired from the studio in 1977, his equipment had been stolen, prompting him to transform the space into a garage.<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\"\"
Untitled, 1948\/54, Modern gelatin silver print. \u00a9 Seydou Ke\u00efta\/SKPEAC, courtesy The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

Seydou Ke\u00efta was discovered in the West in the 1990s. His archive of more than 10,000 negatives gradually came to light. In 1992, French photographers Bernard Descamps and Fran\u00e7oise Huguier, together with gallery owner Andr\u00e9 Magnin, arrived in Bamako in search of Ke\u00efta, whose work had been presented without authorial identification in the exhibition \u2018Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art\u2019 (1991) at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.<\/p>\r\n

The following year, Ke\u00efta\u2019s accredited photographs were first presented to foreign audiences by Huguier and Descamps at the Rencontres internationales de la Photographie in Arles, France. Subsequently, Ke\u00efta did fashion shoots for Harper\u2019s Bazaar and French designer Agn\u00e8s b, achieving international recognition. His first solo exhibition took place in 1994 in Paris at the Fondation Cartier. This was followed by many others in various museums, galleries and foundations around the world.<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\"\"
\u00a9 Seydou Ke\u00efta\/SKPEAC, courtesy The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

Ke\u00efta\u2019s work has appeared in numerous exhibitions, including the Guggenheim, Kunsthalle Wien, MoMA, D\u00fcsseldorf\u2019s Kunst Palast, London\u2019s Hayward Art Gallery, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Johannesburg Art Gallery. His monographs include Seydou Ke\u00efta (1997) and Seydou Ke\u00efta Photographs (2011). His photographs have also been presented at international festivals and biennials in Bamako (1994), S\u00e3o Paulo (1998), and Madrid (1999). In honour of Ke\u00efta\u2019s lifetime achievements, the Bamako Rencontres Grand Prix is \u200b\u200bnamed the Seydou Ke\u00efta Award. Ke\u00efta died in Paris on November 22, 2001.<\/p>\r\n

Whether photographing individuals, families, or professional associations, Ke\u00efta balanced a strict sense of formality with a remarkable level of intimacy with his subjects. On his practice in the studio, Ke\u00efta commented: \u201cIt\u2019s easy to take a picture, but what really made the difference was that I always knew how to find the right position and I never made a mistake. The slightly turned head, a serious face, the position of the hands\u2026 I was able to make someone look really good.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

\"\"
Untitled, 1953\/57, Modern gelatin silver print. \u00a9 Seydou Ke\u00efta\/SKPEAC, courtesy The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

Ke\u00efta went to great lengths to bring out the beauty of his subjects and the bright patterns in his backgrounds proved to be a particularly effective contrast. He worked intuitively, reinventing portrait photography through his pursuit of extreme precision. He is now universally recognized as the father of African photography and considered one of the great photographers of the 20th century.<\/p>\r\n

With biographical references by Andr\u00e9 Magnin and Candace M. Keller. Thanks to Elisabeth Whitelaw, Collection manager CAAC – The Jean Pigozzi Collection of African Art.<\/em><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Flipbook version<\/a><\/div>\r\n
\u00a0<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n\r\n

About the Author:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Alexander Stuparich is editor of CAPTION Magazine for North America and Asia.<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Links<\/strong>: The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection caacart.com<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

instagram.com\/caacart<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photographs: Seydou Ke\u00efta\u00a0 Text: Alexander Stuparich Seydou Ke\u00efta was born around 1921 in Bamako, the capital of the Republic of Mali. A self-taught photographer, his portraits earned him a reputation for excellence throughout West Africa. Inventive and highly modern, his emphasis on the essential components of portrait photography\u2014light, subject, framing\u2014firmly establishes Ke\u00efta among the 20th-century…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7733,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[713],"tags":[891],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-7962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays","tag-n13-en","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7962"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7970,"href":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7962\/revisions\/7970"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7962"},{"taxonomy":"thb-sponsors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.captionmagazine.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thb-sponsors?post=7962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}