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 produces 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 identity photographs and photographs of road accidents for the local police.
Rapidly, he rises to notoriety in Bobo-Dioulasso, which was then the cultural and economic capital of the former Haute-Volta, and where young Africans “hungry for modernity” came “to have their portraits taken.”
Realized 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?, Regional Fund for Contemporary Art of 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.
Photograph accompanied by a certificate of authenticity (Galerie Art-Z, Paris), signed by the photographer.