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 arrived in Bobo-Dioulasso in 1957. Having become a journalist and photographer, he also did 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 road-traffic accident photographs for the local police.
Rapidly, he gained notoriety in Bobo-Dioulasso, which was then the cultural and economic capital of the former Upper Volta, where young Africans “hungry for modernity” came “to have their portraits taken.”
Completed between 1960 and 1985, his photographic work “testifies to the happiness of a freedom rediscovered and to a social and cultural effervescence unique in its kind.”

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