Sanlé Sory (1943–2023) - Les gangsters

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 produces 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 photographs of road accidents for the local police.
Rapidly, he earned notoriety in Bobo-Dioulasso, which at the time was the cultural and economic capital of the former Upper Volta, and where African youths “hungry for modernity” came to “have their portrait taken.”

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

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