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 buys a Rolleiflex 6×6, and begins by taking identity photographs and photographs of road accidents for the local police.
Rapidly, he achieved notoriety in Bobo-Dioulasso, which was then the cultural and economic capital of the former Upper Volta, and where young Africans “desirous of modernity” came “to have their portrait taken.”
Completed between 1960 and 1985, his photographic work “testifies to the happiness of a regained freedom and to a unique social and cultural effervescence.”

Exhibitions
2015: African Folk Art? – FRAC Bordeaux (Regional Fund for Contemporary Art).
2015: Encountering African Photography, Mérignac Municipal 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.
A photograph accompanied by a certificate of authenticity (Galerie Art-Z, Paris), signed by the photographer.