Posing Questions: Identity Construction in the Portrait Studios of Bamako, Mali
Arts
HAVC 190Q: Portraiture 1400-1990
This essay explores postcolonial identity construction in the studio portraits of Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé, working in Bamako, Mali in the 1950s and 60s. Roland Barthes' notion of mythology is utilized to understand the role of photography in reinforcing colonial power structures and its subversion post-independence. This essay also engages with notions of negotiated space, self-fashioning, documentary-style portraiture and the Western art world's response to the work of these two photographers in the 1990s.
