Seydou Keïta was born around 1921 in Bamako, the then-capital of French Sudan, now in Mali. An uneducated carpenter’s apprentice, he received a box camera from his uncle as a child and was making a living as a photographer by the time he turned 20. These photographs present Keïta’s work in the social and historical context of Mali’s post-colonial era: “Championing the rejection of a Western gaze, Keïta’s portraits abolish the reductive view of Africans portrayed as anthropological objects in photographs. Instead, his images are celebratory, expressing the aspiration towards individualism and identity.”
[Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.]