Sory Sanlé - Dandy avant la soirée

Sanlé Sory is a Burkinabé photographer, born in 1943 in Nianiagara in the Republic of Upper Volta.
Ibrahima Sanlé Sory arrives in Bobo-Dioulasso in 1957. Having become a journalist and photographer, he also does album cover illustrations.
He opens his Volta Photo studio in 1962, as his country gains independence. He buys a Rolleiflex 6×6, and begins by taking identity photographs and photographs of road accidents for the local police.
Quickly, he gains notoriety in Bobo-Dioulasso, which is then the cultural and economic capital of the former Upper Volta, and where young Africans « avid for modernity » come « to have their portrait taken »
Realized between 1960 and 1985, his photographic work « testifies to the happiness of a recovered freedom and a unique social and cultural effervescence of its kind. »
Exhibitions
2015: African Folk Art, Fonds régional d’art contemporain de Bordeaux.
2015: Encountering African Photography, 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.
Photographs accompanied by a certificate of authenticity