Tidiani Shitou (1933–2000) - Toi et moi (1975)

Silver print - Signed

Through the names of Seydou Keita or Malik Sidibé, a photographic current popularized in the West has emerged, an African photography in which the human figure is predominant and which highlights the popularity of photographic studios from the 1960s to the 1990s. But many other photographers, also working in studio, remain to be discovered. And this is the first time, in Lyon, that an art and photography gallery offers this possibility. The astonishing images of the doppelgänger of the Malian artist Tidiani Shitou (1933-2000) originate from the artistic and cultural specificities of West Africa. Formal specificities: think of symmetries, hieraticism and the contained energy of statuary, and symbolic specificities. His double portraits, portraits of parents, friends, far from being limited to depicting a fraternal love sentiment badenya (born of the same mother), convey other types of affective relationships between individuals. They emphasize the deep bond that unites two people. The photographer’s art lies in translating this bond through a symbolic resemblance, intensifying the similarity between them through pose, clothing (sometimes lent), accessories, the symmetry of composition, until it creates the illusion of total identification, of a single doubled self. His portraits thus celebrate a relationship while representing it, using symbols: stereotyped twin-like images that are also found in sculpture and in many other everyday objects in West Africa. They are not the immediate, realistic image of individuals but rather the highlighting of the person’s duality and the ideal model represented by the founding twin in the original myths. Sheltered by the gods, twins (though sometimes perceived as evil) bring good fortune and symbolize concord and equity. They are a reminiscence of the origins of the world and they foster a highly fertile imaginary in sub-Saharan Africa. The idea that each person is searching for his alter ego, his complementary soul mate - his twin - constitutes a very popular theme in West Africa: the double portrait often equated with a twin portrait. A portrait in which the individual does not disappear in favor of the double but, on the contrary, grows through his doubling. Tidiani Shitou demonstrates, in portraits of great historical, ethnological and artistic value, that a resolutely contemporary aesthetics can serve traditional thinking. He also shows that, thanks to photography, clients could reclaim their image, or even re-create it, by playing with different layers of their realities and inventing their own modernity and history. An idea animates this “image-maker” who stands between the visible and the invisible: to achieve, through mastery of an appropriate medium, the figure of the mental image of a radical duality of the person. C. Angelo Micheli
El Hadj Tidiani SHITOU (1933 - 2000)
Studio Photo Kodak Olore, Mopti, Mali
Tidiani Shitou, long regarded as the best photographer in his region, produced, from the 1970s to 2000, in his Studio Photo Gangal in Mopti, a substantial body of work. It comprises portraits but also images of celebrations and ceremonies, first in black and white and then in color. Yoruba born in Nigeria, he initially was a tailor and a trader. In Mali from the late 1950s, he stopped in Gao in 1962 where he was trained by Nigerian photographer Mahamane Awani, then in Bamako where he connected with Malick Sidibé, before arriving in Mopti. There he continued his training alongside Malian photographer Bosco Maïga and opened his studio in 1971. But curious about everything, he never ceased to travel sub-Saharan Africa to soak up new ideas through contact with photographers and artists. His keen, tender, amused gaze rested on his fellow citizens in a wide variety of portraits. The Peul, Bozo, Dogon, Sarakole, Bella and Yoruba came to the Mopti Kodak Photo Studio (a very commercial city at the crossroads of the Djenné, Timbuktu and Dogon country routes) for the variety of poses, the numerous accessories provided, and the quality of the images. At the crossroads of models drawn from Western studio photography and a local traditional heritage, he disseminated his knowledge in Mali. He is certainly one of the great promoters of the portrait Ibeji, a double portrait in superimposition developed by the Yoruba within the framework of the cult of twins. He used 6x6 cameras and then a single-lens reflex for color. If his portraits today testify to the elegance and whimsy of a bygone era, if they are rich historical and anthropological documents on cultures, they are above all the reflection of an artistic work associated with the dreams of the models who aspired to another ideal reality. Some of Shitou’s photographs have entered private collections and the Sokkelund Museum in Copenhagen. They were shown at the Bamako Photography Encounters in 2001 and at the Indiana University Art Museum in April 2007. C. Angelo Micheli