Sanlé Sory (1943–2023) - Les DJ(s) au Studio

Sanlé Sory is a Burkinabé photographer, born in 1943 in Nianiagara in the Republic of Upper Volta.
Ibrahima Sanlé Sory arrived in Bobo-Dioulasso in 1957. Having become a journalist and photographer, he also produced illustrations for record sleeves.
He opened his Volta Photo studio in 1962, as his country gained independence. He bought a Rolleiflex 6×6, and began by taking identity photographs and photographs of road accidents for the local police.
Quickly, he gained notoriety in Bobo-Dioulasso, which was then the cultural and economic capital of the former Upper Volta, where young Africans “hungry for modernity” came to “have their portrait taken.”
Completed between 1960 and 1985, his photographic work “testifies to the happiness of a freedom rediscovered and to a social and cultural effervescence that is unique in its kind.”
Exhibitions
2015: Folk art African?, Fonds régional d’art contemporain de Bordeaux.
2015: À la rencontre de la photographie africaine, Mérignac Media Library.
2018: Retrospective, Art Institute of Chicago.
2020: Tête à Têtes - West African Portraiture from Independence into the 21st Century, David Hill Gallery, London.
2020: Bobo Yéyé, Sanlé Sory, Galerie du Château d’Eau, Toulouse.
Photography accompanied by a certificate of authenticity (Galerie Art-Z, Paris)