Sanlé Sory (1943–2023) - Le baiser

Stamped and signed.

Sory Sanlé 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 creates illustrations for record sleeves.
He opens his Volta Photo studio in 1962, as his country gains independence. He buys a Rolleiflex 6×6, and begins by taking ID photos and photographs of road accidents for the local police.
Quickly, he rises to fame in Bobo-Dioulasso, which at the time was 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 “testifies to the happiness of a regained freedom and to a social and cultural effervescence unlike any other.”

Exhibitions
2015: African Folk Art?, Regional Fund for Contemporary Art of Bordeaux.
2015: Encountering 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 (Galerie Art-Z, Paris), signed by the photographer.