photograph by Seydou Keita

SEYDOU KEITA

Seydou Kaita is an African portraitist who lived in Bamako, Mali. He was born in 1921 and lived to 2001.

He was around fourteen years old in 1935 when his uncle, Tiemoko brought home a Kodak Brownie camera home from a trip to Senegal.

Contrary to Tiemoko’s original choice, he had given this camera to Seydou because of his fascination with the device.

A self-thought photographer, whose main work was personally owned portraits, His tiny studio was opened in 1948. He built this studio on some land his father had given him which was behind the main prison in Bamako.

Although he was a self-thought photographer, he received some hand-on training and advice form Mali’s founding portrait photographers, Pierce Garnier and Mountaga Dembele before opening his studio in 1948.

His customers would often dress in European attires while holding objects like bicycles, or would pose in front of European cars.

Seydou also had in his studio a choice of European attires and accessories like watches, pens, radios and instruments most of which were used by his male customers.

The women mostly came in long robes covering their legs up to their throats because at that time European clothes were not permitted. They only started wearing European clothes in the late 60s.

Seydou’s studio was a tiny studio was lit by several five hundred waltz bulbs and a white tapestry that was said to be his bedspread. This hung as a background where his customers often posed in front to have their photographs taken but he mostly worked in the day light.

He became popular during the time of the rapid change in Mali. At the time, there was an immense agricultural emigration to the capital and high demand for portraits that could be sent back home to relatives who remained in outlining regions.

Seydou was discovered in the west in the 1990s and was branded one of the best from West Africa. His photographs were aligned with incredible artist like Rembrandt.  

Seydou gained his first recognition outside Mali in a show titled, “Africa Explores at the Centre for African Art.” This was held in New York, USA in 1991.

The commercial photographer Seydou had his first solo exhibition which took place in Paris at the Foundation Cartier in 1994.

This was where his reputation grew and he became widely recognised as one of the greatest photographers in the 20^th century.

His popular works ended in 1962 after he was named official photographer for the department of interior under Mali’s new government, photographs he took there remain government property. He said he got this job because he was related to the president Modibo Keita who was the president of the new government at the time. He later left this job blaming his departure on political reasons. He said, he had falling out with one of the military men and had gotten tired of working under the government.

After he quietly retired from the government job, he went on to work as a mechanic.

The seventeen black and white portraits he took in 1948 and 1960, where on display in the Museum of Contemporary Arts (MOCA). These photographs were not the exact album sized and pocket sized prints he made in his darkroom. They were made to be included in a high-end gallery context and were for sale in a reputable western art market prices. Seydou’s photographs were sold in 1997 in Gagosian gallery, London. They sold for as high as twenty thousand dollars.

All Seydou Keita’s prints for sale at the Sean Kelly gallery which now represents the Seydou Keita’s Association in New York were produced with his permission by Charles Griffin who is the world famous printer. He has worked with the likes of Cindy Sherman and Hiroshi Sugimoto. This collaboration followed on a bitter controversy between Seydou and the associates of French collector, Jean Pigozzi.

Jean Pigozzi had first affianced a printer Andre Magnin to print three photographs which were displayed in the Africa Explores exhibition and later produced the much larger version seen in the Gagosian gallery show. At that time allegations were made concerning forged signatures of the production of prints without Seydou’s consent.

Magnin had gone in search of Seydou at the request of Jean Pigozzi soon after his work was displayed as unknown artist, Bamako, Mali in Africa Explores: “20^th century African art.”

The custodian of the museum claimed she had collected the photographs while on vacation Mali and neglected to save the artist’s name.

The story of how Magnin met with Keita was differently told by each individual. The divergences between these two versions are full of significance to the issues which later unfolded during the legal battle between Seydou’s association and Magnin.

Andre Magnin who was praised for being Keita’s discoverer, painted a picture describing Keita’s Muslim clothing, he described him as wearing a boubou and a fez with his pose in the doorway and the lighten coming through the window.

Seydou on the other hand claims Magnin barely recognised him initially, he said that instead of him being dressed for the mosque as Magnin described, he remembered that on that day, he was working on his engine.

Both men had arranged a deal during their meeting in 1991 and Magnin had selected one thousand, three hundred photographs to be enlarged and made into high-quality prints.

The prints were sent to Seydou for signing which verified the prints and increased the later price tag.

The large sums of money at stake may have contributed to the disharmony which arose in Keita and Magnin’s relationship.

Apparently, the initial agreement had been verbal due to custom in Africa.

At a time when it was obvious that the artist’s health was failing, Magnin had suggested to Keita that he should entrust his estate to him. 

Though unclear about the details concerning this discussion, seemingly Seydou had been upset about this proposal. In October 2001 just before Keita’s death, the control of his estate was handed over to his agent Jean Marc Patras, who helped him form the Seydou Keita association Bamako.

The association sued Magnin for the return of the negatives he had of Keita’s work in his possession, but they have not been returned according to media coverage on this feud.   

Nobody could be for certain who owned Seydou Keita’s works as tins of negatives which had been buried for three decades that when opened, bared Seydou as neither an indigenous nor modern photographer.

The different versions of his photographs presented in the gallery compared to the artistic displays in the museums, paints a complicated idea to his work.

In the galleries his works are being presented as commercial photographs and the style being put into that kind of print are made to attract sales but in the museum, the prints are being presented as art, meant for the viewers to decipher what is behind these photographs which are personal descriptions of the artist’s thoughts. Some of them are given huge branded names to exude importance and others no with no names at all but are given huge display spaces to feed viewers’ eyes.

Magerite Loke who wrote for the New York Times had described Seydou Keita as “the man who brought renewed vitality to the art of photographic portraiture.” She among many others who have viewed his works has been amazed by its artistry which backs up the fact that there is more art in his photographs than just mere personal portraits.

Michael Rips a journalist had written in his column about Keita in a different when he spoke about how he had discovered Keita’s work to be over saturated.

He said a man named Ibrahim who frequently appeared at his door with garbage bags of fetish figures called to show him something. He showed him a small piece of paper, on the front was an image of a young African woman. The contrast and intensity of the black and whites were minimal and the light was uncertain and the patterns of the costumes were barely visible. On the back of this photograph was written Keita Seydou, photographe Bamako dated 3^rd of April 1959.

According to Michael, this picture looked nothing like the ones displayed in the gallery and Ibrahim to him this was an original and this was what Seydou’s studio made.

Michael said, he had discovered and purchased a handful of these similar prints for several hundred dollars.

The issue of how a pocket sized print which was sold for few dollars in Mali had become wall size photographs which sold from sixteen thousand dollars in the exhibition shows how commercialized Keita’s works are being portrayed and their use.

His photographs give a sense of African colonization and the changing of image which can give power to the colonized.  The European objects and attires used and worn by his customers show an evolvement of the western culture being infused into the African culture. The black and white density of the photographs captures a moment at the time and changes.

The poses and the expressions on the subjects look almost too straight but once looked at deeply, they give a sense of personal belonging. Almost seems like a need to belong to the elite which were the French colonizers.

Seydou Keita’s works could be debated by scholars of Fine Art as perfect and by commercial marketers as inspiring. 

Photographs by Seydou Keita