Seydou Keïta’s illuminating portraits of life in Mali

A Tactile Lens — In the 20th century, the photographer built a huge archive of tens of thousands of pictures, documenting people and lives in the newly independent country. A new exhibition and catalogue dives into his work.

“Who was Seydou Keïta?” It is a question many have asked, hoping to distil the inscrutable essence of the photographer who chronicled the people of Mali from his portrait studio in Bamako during the mid-20^th century. Like his contemporaries, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, Seydou Keïta (c.1921 – 2001) was a master of form, using the camera to craft a luminous tableaux of contemporary life.

With the new exhibition and catalogue, Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens, curator Catherine E. McKinley takes us inside the enigmatic photographer’s extraordinary world. McKinley travelled to Mali to meet with Keïta’s family and sitters, seeing Keïta through their eyes. “He had a doubleness,” McKinley says. “He was a real dandy. He had four wives, a lot of children, a lot of cars, and one of the first Vespas. He was a little bit of a showboat, but at the same time, he was deeply private, modest in a lot of ways, and emotionally closed off. One of his brothers said that sometimes they wondered if he had a pulse.”

As the eldest of five siblings, Keïta carried the mantle of responsibility from a young age, forgoing school to apprentice in the family carpentry business. At age 14, Uncle Tiemoko gifted him a camera, and he quickly set to work, training as an apprentice before opening his first studio at the family home in Bamako-Coura in 1948. “[His family] talked about him being a very stern patriarch, taking care of everybody and loving, but with a kind of distance,” McKinley says. “He was always immaculate, well dressed, not a crease in his robes, the hat perfectly appointed on his head. He was careful with his words, and I see that in his work. He only allowed himself one shot because of the cost.”

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Torn vintage portrait with teal and yellow painted headwrap and jewellery on aged paper with brown spots and stains.

Black and white image: woman in polka dot dress reclining on chequered surface against ornate floral wallpaper background.

Untitled, ca. 1948–63

Untitled, 1953-57

Keïta combined his eye for design with a profound sense of the grandeur and intimacy a portrait could express. “He spent time positioning the subjects, he was very tactile with them, almost molding their clothing like a sculpture,” McKinley says. “He gave a lot of attention to the hands and the angles of the face. The settings and backdrops were so rich, even though sometimes they were very offhand – he would just grab a bedspread and use it as a background. He was able to feel so deeply into the sitter at the same time. He never lost sight of who he was photographing.”

His hypersensitivity to his sitter’s inner lives is believed to have taken root in his early years, when his mother began suffering from leprosy of the brain. “She became strange and then frightening to them. She remained in the compound, but the father divorced her and she was ostracised,” McKinley says. “Keïta took care of her, but was estranged from her for most of his life. I think this has something to do with the way he was able to go deeply into the psyche of the people he photographed.”

In 1962, Keïta was called to work for the newly independent nation of Mali, effectively ending his studio career to service the Ministry of Information with publicity photographs, as well as collaborate with police and security forces on sensitive tasks. No known records exist of Keïta’s work with the régime. But his archive of some 30,000 negatives made in his portrait studio, precisely arranged by date and type, remained perfectly intact, a visual history as seen from the inside looking out.