In April 2024, curator and creator Catherine E McKinley travelled to Mali to satisfy the household of legendary photographer Seydou Keïta, to debate an upcoming exhibition and to ask for his or her participation.
Celebrated as one of the excellent Twentieth-century photographers, Keïta ran a pictures studio within the Malian capital, Bamako, between the late Nineteen Forties and early Sixties, the place he shot black and white portraits of fashionably dressed individuals, with the patterned backdrops that he’s maybe greatest identified for. He additionally documented the social and political panorama in pre- and post-independence Mali. That work was launched to the West within the early Nineteen Nineties, first anonymously in New York after which later recognized, in group and solo exhibitions at galleries, museums, and foundations around the globe.
Seydou Keïta, Untitled, 1949-51
(Image credit score: Courtesy of The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection. © SKPEAC/Seydou Keita, courtesy The Jean Pigozzi African Art and Danziger Gallery, NY)
Seydou Keïta, Untitled, 1957-60
(Image credit score: Courtesy of The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection. © SKPEAC/Seydou Keita, courtesy The Jean Pigozzi African Art and Danziger Gallery, NY)
During the Mali journey, McKinley had intensive conversations with members of the artist’s prolonged household, who confirmed her his archive, which in flip turned their contribution of beforehand unseen materials, images, and different gadgets of their possession.
‘Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens’, billed as probably the most intensive North American presentation of the artist, is now open on the Brooklyn Museum, and contains virtually 275 works, together with portraits, uncommon photos, and never-before-seen negatives, textiles, jewelry, clothes, and the artist’s private gadgets. Keïta‘s family also put McKinley in touch with a surviving sitter of the artist, whose interview will be on view in the Brooklyn Museum exhibition.
‘It’s an actual vary when it comes to dimension, format, and publicity,’ says McKinley, who organised the exhibition with Imani Williford, curatorial assistant of Photography, Fashion, and Material Culture on the Brooklyn Museum. ‘I believe what strikes me probably the most is that we’ve sort of actually simply begun to take a look at Keïta specifically, but in addition on the broader area of African pictures in relation to world pictures. So it’s very thrilling for me. I believe that it’s a brand new second when it comes to scholarship, and for viewers.’
Seydou Keïta, Untitled, late Nineteen Forties to mid Nineteen Seventies
(Image credit score: Courtesy of The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection. © SKPEAC/Seydou Keita, courtesy The Jean Pigozzi African Art and Danziger Gallery, NY)
Seydou Keïta, Untitled, late Nineteen Forties to mid Nineteen Seventies
(Image credit score: Courtesy of The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection. © SKPEAC/Seydou Keita, courtesy The Jean Pigozzi African Art and Danziger Gallery, NY)
The journey to the West African nation was formative in some ways. ‘I discovered loads about Keïta,’ McKinley tells Wallpaper*. ‘I might say [his family] disrupted a number of my concepts about who he was and what the studio life was like. And I didn’t realise how concerned the household was within the photographic course of and the way a lot they have been part of the studio life.’
The data gained from the go to and conversations, McKinley provides, ‘formed all the things. It modified the DNA of the exhibition, and even how I take a look at a number of the works, as a result of even lots of the images which are well-known find yourself having relations as topics.’ McKinley cites an instance of a sitter whom she initially thought was a well-known singer, however who turned out to be a very totally different individual. ‘It altered how I take into consideration a number of the work,’ says the curator.
Stories about Keïta’s studio portraits usually state that the sitters have been middle-class Malians, however that wasn’t essentially the case, because the record included migrant employees, civil servants, guests from throughout West Africa, and a few individuals who saved up for the event, ‘due to the significance of getting a photographic document or memento for the household’, as McKinley places it. ‘I believe it’s a extremely thrilling second to re-approach Keïta.’
‘Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens’ is on the Brooklyn Museum till 8 March 2026
Seydou Keïta, Untitled, 1953-7
(Image credit score: Courtesy of The Jean Pigozzi African Art Collection. © SKPEAC/Seydou Keita, courtesy The Jean Pigozzi African Art and Danziger Gallery, NY)