Travel Tip: Art and Archaeology in England
Malick Sidibé

The celebrated Malinese photographer Malick Sidibé (b. 1935) is the focus of this exhibition. Sidibé is the eminence grise of African photography and one of the first African photographers to win recognition in the West for his work.

Malick Sidibé received a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement for his entire oeuvre at the Venice Biennale of 2007. In 2008 Sidibé was also honoured by the International Centre for Photography (ICP) in New York with their 24th Lifetime Achievement Award. Thus far in 2009 He has received the Baume & Mercier award at Photo Espagna 2009.

Malick Sidibé was born in 1935 in Soloba, near Bamako (Mali). He was the only child in the family to be sent to Bamako to study at the Ecole des Artisans Soudanais. Gérard Guillat, a French photographer living in Mali, took Malick on as an assistant. From Guillat, Sidibé was able to learn the basic skills of photography. He earned his living by taking photos at parties given by the young people of Bamako’s middle classes.

In the 60's and 70's Malick worked mainly with the burgeoning club scene of the young folk of Bamako. Clubs with glamorous names like "Les Cyclones", "Les Monkees" or "Les Chats Sauvages" were constantly sprouting up and were all the rage. Surprise parties in the evenings, river Niger on hot Sundays, football championships, boxing matches, and all sorts of events that Malick illustrated with moving photographs, lively snapshots, and leisure poses. Malick's photography studio itself became a hip hangout for Bamako's youth. Being a real inside-scenester, Malick was entrusted by his clients to photograph them at all times.

In the mid-1970s, Sidibé moved into a new area of work, confining himself to studio portraiture and the repair of cameras.

Malick Sidibé's pictures reflect the convivial and carefree atmosphere of a post-colonial African capital. But beyond that they are simple, spontaneous, yet extremely beautiful images, illustrating moments of truth and complicity. They reveal Malick Sidibé's love of people and his passion for photography and allow us to witness another face of Africa. Recent exhibitions of Malick Sidibé's work include the Deitch Projects, New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago both in 1999. A vintage show at the Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, as well as the "You look beautiful like that" show at the Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles and at the Fogg Museum, Harvard University; all in 2002.

There was a major retrospective of his work at the National Portrait Gallery, London, alongside fellow Mali photographer Seydou Keďta, in 2003. This was also the year that Malick was awarded the prestigious Hasselblad Prize. Since then he has continued to be exhibited and added to public and private collections worldwide, and in 2007 became the first photographer to be awarded the Lion d'Or for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale.