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 sleeve illustrations for record covers.
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.
Rapidly, he rises 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” would come “to have their portraits taken.”
Realized between 1960 and 1985, his photographic work “testifies to the happiness of a regained freedom and to a unique social and cultural effervescence.”
Exhibitions
2015 : African Folk Art, Regional Fund for Contemporary Art of Bordeaux.
2015 : Encountering African Photography, Mérignac 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