Rare first hardcover edition. Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 226 pages The thousands of portraits that Keita took from a outstanding record of Malian society between the the end of the Forties and the early Sixties. his photographs has become works of art, free from tricks, ore any attempt of illusion. At a time of interest in other cultures, this work of rare beauty takes a deserved place in the world history of photography. Malian portraitist of the 20th century, Seydou Keïta is considered today as one of the greatest contemporary photographers. In 1935, returning from a stay in Senegal, his uncle gave him his first camera, a Kodak Brownie: Keïta, then fourteen years old, began to photograph his relatives before acquiring a 13 x 18 chamber camera. He opened his studio in 1948 and specialized in black and white portraiture. Quickly, his mastery of the technique and his aesthetic sense imposed him as a portrait painter, and the All-Bamako crowded to his house: people came to be photographed alone, as a couple, as a family or in a group. Installing his models in front of fabrics, the artist works on the staging of his shots: adjusting the poses, lending clothes, jewelry or accessories for the occasion, he seeks to give the most beautiful image of his clients. Until Mali's independence in 1960, Seydou Keïta produced several thousand portraits of his fellow citizens: his photos also constitute a unique testimony to Malian society in the 1950s. seize, through more than two hundred photos, the work of one of the great talents of African photography. (Like Malick Sidibé)