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 arrived in Bobo-Dioulasso in 1957. Having become a journalist and photographer, he also creates 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 photos 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, and where young Africans “hungry for modernity” came “to have their portraits taken.”
Produced between 1960 and 1985, his photographic work “testifies to the happiness of a recovered freedom and to a unique social and cultural effervescence.”
Exhibitions
2015: African Folk Art, Fonds régional d’art contemporain de Bordeaux.
2015: À la rencontre de la photographie africaine, médiathèque de Mérignac.
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