Sanlé Sory (1943–2023) - Le Boxer

Stamped and signed.

Sory Sanlé 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 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.”
Completed between 1960 and 1985, his photographic work “testifies to the happiness of a freedom regained and to a social and cultural effervescence unique of its kind.”

Exhibitions
2015: African Folk Art?, 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.
Photography accompanied by a certificate of authenticity (Galerie Art-Z, Paris), signed by the photographer.