Malick Sidibe': Chemises

text by Jerome Sother 

First edition, in French and English.  Gottingen, GE:  Steidl, 2007

Softback is overall in VERY GOOD condition.

• Gray paper wraps replicate file folders, with ink stamped illustration and titles in typewriter font. 
• Wraps show some smudges, marks, bumping, edgewear.  Corners are softened.  See photos.  
• Spine has blue text and is clear, with bumped ends.
• Binding is secure.  
• Illustrations are bright and clear.  
• Interior exhibits minimal signs of age and wear.  Inside pages are free of writing and intentional marks.
• PS2024.0103

Unpaginated. 10 x 12.75 inches

ISBN: 978-3-86521-523-9

That the beginnings of Malick Sidibé's career as a photographer coincided with Mali's independence from France (in 1960) was serendipitous, and he was certainly the right man to portray the country's postcolonial euphoria.  Sidibé focused on the explosion of youth culture and music in 1960s Bamako, photographing all the happening events and ceremonies, including football matches, weddings, Christmas Eve celebrations and parties at clubs like Los Cubanos, Les Caïds, Les Las Vegas -- names that convey the influx of Western music into Mali.  Visiting as many as five of these venues in one evening, Sidibé would capture Bamako's youth in a close-up snapshot style that conveys the joyful conviviality of this era, and the blending of African and western cultures in dances like the Mali Twist, and in curious combinations of traditional and European clothing.  Sidibé would then display his carefully numbered index prints, glued onto administrative folders, on his studio walls for customers -- usually the subjects of his photographs -- to peruse.  These are the "chemises" of this book's title.  As an invaluable document of 1960s Mali, and as a large portion of Sidibé's oeuvre, Chemises is an essential volume for anyone interested in contemporary African photography.
Malick Sidibé (1935-2016) opened his own studio in Bamako in 1958.  His photography is now exhibited around the world, and he is considered one of Africa's greatest portrait photographers.

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