Sory Sanlé - La strarlette

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 did sleeve illustrations for records.
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 road-traffic accident photographs for the local police.
Soon he rose to prominence in Bobo-Dioulasso, which was then the cultural and economic capital of the former Upper Volta, and where young Africans “hungry for modernity” came “to have their portrait taken.”
Produced between 1960 and 1985, his photographic work “bears witness to the happiness of a freedom regained and to a social and cultural effervescence unique in its own right.”
Exhibitions
2015: African Folk Art, FRAC Bordeaux (Fonds régional d’art contemporain de Bordeaux).
2015: Meeting 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