'You Look Beautiful Like That'

Mali Tue 24-11-2009

'You Look Beautiful Like That'
By David Blumenkrantz

“Generally speaking, for an African photographer, getting paid is the name of the game. We don’t just pick up a camera for the pure pleasure of it . . . our work stems from an economic need. We learned it from the French . . . It wasn’t the love of the camera that first drew Africans to photography, it was the promise of financial gain and respectable employment. But that first taste turned into a genuine hunger, and a real passion for the art of photography was born.”
* Malick Sidibe, 2000

“Whenever I look at my negatives I feel proud of the work I’ve done . . . Frankly, we work in order to earn our daily bread here. When you’re the head of the household it’s your job to make sure you can feed your family! Photography started out as a means to an end to me , (but) I fell head over heels in love with (it), and it’s been a lasting affair.”
* Seydou Keita, 2000

Photograph by Seydou Keita
The studio portraits of Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe present us with a unique opportunity to consider photography through a non-Western prism.

While the presence of universal themes inherent in all portraiture makes their works comparable in content and form to many of their better known counterparts in the West, such comparisons are essentially superficial. To measure these images against the barometer of Avedon, Penn, Arbus and others of the much-touted Modernist/Fine Art ilk, would only skew perspective, understating the uniqueness of their origins.

Far better to accept them for what they really represent on the most earthbound level—a wonderful example of the mining of colonial cultural wealth.

France rarely did better than finding these two artistic souls in Bamako. A particularly seminal example: The ever-probing, relentlessly psychological filter of the Western perspective lends these images a great, though unintended irony. We may look upon images of men posing with radios, clocks or cameras as status symbols, and interpret them as a representation of the temporal, cultural legacy left to colonial Africa.

From a singularly African perspective, however, this interpretation may seem irrelevant. To the more defensive critics, they might even seem superfluous, or patronizing. Unintended irony. (a much more detailed explanation of this would be needed for a full analysis).
sidibe

In the booklet accompanying a recent exhibition of two artists’ work, Michelle Lamuniere, a student at Boston University, cites one curator’s platitude: “it is the tension between what Keita’s sitters brought to the portrait session and the pictorial framework that attracts the viewer’s eye.”3 Well, one would be hard-pressed to find a compelling portrait that lacks either of these qualities (where else, after all, than within the pictorial framework?).

What could be mentioned here is that what initially attracts the viewer’s eye is the fascination the West has with the Otherness of cultures found in places such as Africa.

In the end, the strength of Keita and Sidibe’s images lies not so much in the craftsmanship or technique they employed, but rather in the simplicity and directness with which the subjects met the gaze of the camera. This was achieved largely due to the democratic, sitter-friendly environment found in most urban and rural studios in the world’s poorer countries.

There is little admission of any intention by these photographers to do anything more than create “memories” for their clientele.

Ultimately, it must be conceded that the images are given their great weight almost incidentally, and the body of work as a whole constitutes a great documentation of neo-colonial African culture.

The portraits by Sidibe, Keita—not to forget countless others who have remained anonymous-- are iconographically defined through the symbols of fashion and technology, so often awkwardly embraced by a people torn between tradition and the desire to adapt to the “modern” world. Otherwise, it is unlikely that these photos would have attracted attention outside of Africa.

Photograph by Seydou Keita
Seydou Keita, untitled 1957

Both the face and the uniform of French colonialism blend the determined loyalty of the colonial subject, cap jauntily tipped, and the look of uncertainty of the colonial mentality eyes abject, mouth turning down.

How is our perception of this photograph affected by the knowledge that it was taken by an African photographer? Does it seem kinder? Is Keita, as Lamuniere’s thesis posits, really “controlling the camera to create images of African subjects for an African audience”? (12) Or, since this was taken commercially, at the request of the sitter, was there really such thing as an African “audience” beyond the sitter?

Photograph by Seydou Keita
Seydou Keita, untitled 1952-1955

The woman’s dress, traditionally adorned can today in Mali still be worn while the duds the man has donned clearly reveal how his culture has been conned . . . incongruent with his tribal scars he’s out of date, irrelevant now, while she dresses the same.One could quibble and fret over the unpretentiously shabby set.

How unfortunate that would be, we’d fail to see: the traditional African cultures are timeless, proven brilliantly by Keita’s camera.

Photograph by Seydou Keita
Seydou Keita, untitled 1956-1957

Radio communication, rural electrification Clock creates time … a colonial time worn on the wrist as well, hand on the knob demonstrates mastery of the technology, foot on the rest demonstrates relaxing of psychology people at the cusp of independence, well aware of how this will look in anthropology.

“Keita expressed mixed feelings about the use of Western apparel and appurtenances:: `We began to lose our ancestor’s culture.’ Despite his dismay . . . he provided European-style suits to clients who desired them for portrait sessions.” (Lamuniere 37)

Malick Sidibe, The newly circumsised and their teacher

Avedon would probably love this—there is just enough indecision in the subjects to imply dominance by the photographer over the sitters (though this is apparently not the intention of Sidibe). That doesn’t mean that Arbus or Frank, Winongrand or Avedon could have tried it more to the style of Irving Penn.

An image as raw as this one reads like the photographic antithesis of the National Geographic romanticist

Potrait by Malick Sidibe
Malick Sidibe, Potrait 1969

Woman in recline . . . a universal theme. “Sometimes a woman comes looking for a more quiet, laid-back atmosphere, as if she were in her bedroom. If the photographer can sense what she wants, the end result can be very charming. There’s a sort of serenity and ease, almost as if she were at home, not in a photography studio.” Malick Sidibe (Lamuniere 55)

For Sidibe and Keita, the studio originated as a strictly utilitarian space, to earn daily bread for their families . . . a common refrain among the vast majority of African-born photographers. As both photographers grew into artists, their respective styles were forged. However, it was not until they were discovered by the relentless Europeans-in –search-of-Native Art & Culture, that they started to think of themselves as “Artists” (quotations indicate Western identification).

The sum of the parts is far more than quaint, and we are all the richer for it.

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