Malick Sidibé facts for kids

Malick Sidibé (1935 – 14 April 2016) was a Malian photographer noted for his black-and-white studies of popular culture in the 1960s in Bamako. Sidibé had a long and fruitful career as a photographer in Bamako, Mali, and was a well-known figure in his community. In 1994 he had his first exhibition outside of Mali and received much critical praise for his carefully composed portraits. Sidibé's work has since become well known and renowned on a global scale. 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 the Venice Biennale, becoming both the first photographer and the first African so recognized. Other awards he has received include a Hasselblad Award for photography, an International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement, and a World Press Photo award.

Sidibé's work is held in the collections of The Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC), the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Life and work

Sidibé's studio in Bamako showing his cameras and equipment

Sidibé was born in the village of Soloba, 300 km from Bamako, in Mali. His father was a stock breeder, farmer, and skilled hunter named Kolo Barry Sidibé. Malick's father had wanted him to attend school, but passed before he was able to attend at the age of 16. In 1955 photographer Gérard Guillat came to the school looking for a student to decorate his studio, eventually hiring Sidibé. Guillat was impressed with his work and took him on as an apprentice. Sidibé's first tasks included calibrating equipment, and delivering prints. He soon learned more about photography as he assisted Guillat, and eventually took on his own clients. In 1957 Guillat closed his studio, and Sidibé began taking photographs of Bamako nightlife. He specialized in documentary photography, focusing particularly on the youth culture of the Malian capital. ..... 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.

In 1962 Sidibé opened his own studio in the Bagadadji neighborhood or Bamako. Sidibé continued to take photos of the surprise parties and club gatherings of the city until 1976. He attributed ending his career in reportagé to fewer club parties, rise in availability of affordable cameras, and the growth of the auto-lab film development industry. Sidibé continued to shoot black and white studio portraits, ID photos, and fix broken cameras at his Bamako studio. While Sidibé was locally famous for decades, he was not introduced into the Western fine art world until 1994 when he had a chance encounter with French curator André Magnin. 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. And it was images like these that revealed how Sidibé's photographic style was inextricably linked to music. This connection is something that Sidibé had spoken about during interviews, over the years. 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.

Sidibé used flash when out in the field, but only tungsten lighting in the studio. He used an Agfa 6 x 6 camera with bellows to shoot weddings and more formal events, and a Foca Sport 24 x 36 for his more candid work. He was known as a very charming person and would tell his clients jokes to put them at ease while shooting portraits. 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, and the video pays tribute to a particular time (during the 1960s and '70s) 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. 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. More recently, Sidibé's influence can be seen directly through Inna Modja’s 2015 video for her song "Tombouctou," 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.

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.

Sidibé died of complications from diabetes in Bamako. He was survived by 17 children and three wives.

Awards

• 2003: Hasselblad Award for photography
• 2007: Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement, Venice Biennale
• 2008: Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement, International Center of Photography (ICP), New York
• 2010: World Press Photo award – first prize singles, Arts and Entertainment

Collections

Sidibé's negative collection, in his studio in Bamako

Sidibé's work is held in the following public collections:

• The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
• The Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC) of Jean Pigozzi, Geneva
• J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA
• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
• Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
• Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL
• Studio Museum in Harlem (New York)
• High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
• International Center of Photography, New York
• Moderna Museet, Stockholm
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, Texas

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

• 1995: Malick Sidibé: Bamako 1962–1976, Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris
• 1999: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL
• 1999: Malick Sidibé. Photographie, Dany Keller Galerie, Munich
• 1999: Cool Cats and Twist Club, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, Australia
• 2000: Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva, Switzerland
• 2001: Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy
• 2001: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands
• 2002: HackelBury Fine Art Limited, London
• 2003: Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg, Sweden
• 2004: CAV Coimbra Visual Arts Centre, Coimbra, Portugal
• 2004: Museet for Fotokunst, Brandts Klaedefabrik, Odense, Denmark
• 2005: Photographs: 1960–2004, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, USA
• 2007: Malick Sidibé. C'est Pas Ma Faute, Musee des arts derniers, Paris
• 2007: Malick Sidibé. Los Sabena Club, Fifty One Fine Art Photography, Antwerp, Belgium
• 2008: Malick Sidibé. Chemises, Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• 2009: Malick Sidibé. Bamako Nights, Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon sur Saône, France
• 2010: "Studio Malick", Tristan Hoare, London
• 2011: Malick Sidibé. The Eye of Bamako, M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
• 2015: Studio Malick. Gares de Bretagne et Montparnasse, Frac Bretagne, Conseil régional and SNCF
• 2014: Malick Sidibé, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, USA
• 2016: It's Too Funky In Here! By Malick Sidibé, FIFTY ONE TOO, Antwerp, Belgium
• 2017: Malick Sidibé. The Eye of Modern Mali, Somerset House, London His first solo exhibition in the UK.

Group exhibitions and festivals

• 1995: Seydou Keita & Malick Sidibe: Photographs From Mali, Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland
• 1996: Double vie, Double vue, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, France
• 1996: By Night, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, France
• 1999: 6th International İstanbul Biennial 1999, International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey
• 2000: Africa: Past-Present, Fifty One Fine Art Photography, Antwerp
• 2001–2003: You look beautiful like that: The Portrait of Photographs of Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé, Fogg Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; UCLA Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, USA; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach FL; National Portrait Gallery, London; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA
• 2004: Photography: Inaugural Installation, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, USA
• 2004: Seeds and Roots, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, USA
• 2005: African Art Now - Masterpieces from the Jean Pigozzi Collection, National Museum of African Art, Washington, USA
• 2007: Why Africa? The work of 13 photographers including Sidibé, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Chéri Samba, Makonde Lilanga, and Keita Seydou, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin, Italy.
• 2009: Masters of Photography, Fifty One Fine Art Photography, Antwerp, Belgium
• 2009: Some Tribes, Christophe Guye Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland
• 2010: Posing Beauty in African American Culture, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, USA
• 2010: Un Rêve Utile: Photographie Africaine 1960–2010, BOZAR – Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
• 2010: Represent: Imaging African American Culture In Contemporary Art, Hagedorn Foundation Gallery, Atlanta, USA
• 2010: African Stories, Marrakech Art Fair, Marrakech
• 2011: Paris Photo, Grand Palais, The Walther Collection
• 2012: Afrika, hin und zurück, Museum Folkwang, Essen
• 2012: Gaze – The Changing Face of Portrait Photography, Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey
• 2012: Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s, Barbican Centre,
• 2014: Back to Front, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Seattle, USA
• 2014: Ici l'Afrique, Château de Penthes, Pregny-Chambésy, France
• 2015: The Pistil's waitz, Gallery Fifty One, Antwerp, Belgium
• 2015: Making Africa. Un Continente De Diseño Contemporáneo, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain
• 2016: VIVRE !!, Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration, Paris, France
• 2016: Regarding Africa: Contemporary Art and Afro-Futurism, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
• 2017: Back Stories, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Seattle, USA
• 2017: Il Cacciatore Bianco / The White Hunter, FM Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy
• 2017: Rhona Hoffman. 40 Years: Part 3. Political, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, USA
• 2020: Through an African Lens: Sub-Saharan Photography from the Museum's Collections, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, Texas

Film and television appearances

• Malick Sidibé: portrait of the artist as a portraitist (2006). . Directed by Susan Vogel for the National Museum of Mali / Prince Street Pictures. Produced by Vogel, Samuel Sidbe, and Catherine de Clippel. Interview with Sidibé by Jean-Paul Colleyn. In French with English subtitles.
• Dolce Vita Africana (2008, Tigerlily Films). 62 mins. Directed by Cosima Spender. Produced by Natasha Dack, Nikki Parrott, and Spender. A documentary about Sidibé, and about Malian history as told through people he photographed. In Bamanankan and French. The film was shown as part of BBC4's Storyville series in March 2008.
• Malick Sidibé, le Partage (2013, P.O.M. Films; Éditions de L'Œil, ADAV). 52 mins. DVD and brochure. Film by Thomas Glaser, text by Gaël Teicher. ISBN: 9782351371558. The film is in French with French and English subtitles, and the text is in French.

See also

In Spanish: Malick Sidibé para niños