Malick Sidibé

Chez Samaké le 24-8-63

Vintage silver gelatin prints on card

35 × 51 cm

Mali

This is a unique work.

The chemises were Malick Sidibé's personal reference system for ordering prints and each is unique. Many images within the chemises do not exist in any other form, as prints were not ordered, and negatives have often not survived. These chemises provide a unique insight into the social life of Bamako, Mali, in the 1960s and 70s.

Similar chemises are part of the collections of Centre Pompidou museum in Paris and MoMA in New York.

Malick sometimes made up to five reports in one night before returning to the lab to develop the negatives and display on the studio walls index prints which were carefully numbered and glued in administrative folders. In the following days the partiers came around to look at these folders and select the photos that they wanted to buy.