Malick Sidibé is Mali

Mali

Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...

an photographer noted for his black-and-white studies of popular culture

Popular culture

Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...

 in the 1960s in Bamako

Bamako

Bamako is the capital of Mali and its largest city with a population of 1.8 million . Currently, it is estimated to be the fastest growing city in Africa and sixth fastest in the world...

. He was born in Soloba

Soloba

Soloba is a small town and seat of the commune of Yallankoro-Soloba in the Cercle of Sikasso in the Sikasso Region of southern Mali....

, Mali and completed his studies in design and jewelry in the École des Artisans Soudanais (now the Institut National des Arts) in Bamako. In 1955, he undertook an apprenticeship at Gérard Guillat-Guignard's Photo Service Boutique, also known as Gégé la pellicule.

In 1958, he opened his own studio (Studio Malick) in Bamako and specialized in documentary photography

Documentary photography

Documentary photography usually refers to a popular form of photography used to chronicle significant and historical events. It is typically covered in professional photojournalism, but it may also be an amateur, artistic, or academic pursuit...

, focusing particularly on the youth culture of the Malian capital. In the 1970s, he turned towards the making of studio portraits.

Sidibé was able to increase his reputation through the first meetings on African photography in Mali in 1994. His work is now exhibited in Europe (for example, the Fondation Cartier in Paris), the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

.

In 2003, Malick Sidibé received the Hasselblad Award

Hasselblad Award

The Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography is an award granted to "a photographer recognized for major achievements".The award – and the foundation – was set up from the estate of Erna and Victor Hasselblad...

 for photography.

Sidibé was awarded the Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

's Golden Lion

Golden Lion

Il Leone d’Oro is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most distinguished prizes...

 for lifetime achievement award in 2007. It was the first time it had been presented to a photographer.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6740213.stm

Malick Sidibé is represented by Fifty One Fine Art Photography, Antwerp.http://www.gallery51.com

In 2006 Tigerlily Films made a documentary entitled "Dolce Vita Africana" about Malick, filming him at work in his studio in Bamako, having a reunion with many of his friends (and former photographic subjects) from his younger days and speaking to him about his work.

In 2008, Sidibé was awarded the ICP

International Center of Photography

The International Center of Photography is a photography museum, school, and research center in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States...

 Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Major shows

• Museum of Contemporary Art (solo), Chicago, USA , 1996
• Centre d’Art Contemporain (solo), Geneva, Switzerland (solo), 2000
• Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (solo), Rome, Italy (solo), 2001
• Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (solo), 2001
• You look beautiful like that : The Portrait of Photographs of Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, USA; UCLA Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach FL, USA; National Portrait Gallery, London, Great Britain; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, MA, USA, (2001-2003)
• Musée Pincé, Angers (solo), France, 2003
• Hasselblad Center (solo), Göteborg Museum of Art, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2003-2004
• CAV Coimbra Visual Arts Centre (solo), Coimbra, Portugal. 2004
• Museet for Fotokunst. Brandts Klaedefabrik (solo), Odense, Denmark, 2004
• Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam (solo), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2008

External links

• Anglo-American Name Authority File, s.v. "Sidibé, Malick", LC Control Number nr 97026272. Accessed 2 April 2007.
• Artnet, s.v. "Malick Sidibe". Accessed 2 April 2007.
• Clewing, Ulrich. "Malick Sidibé: Pictures full of music". Culturebase.net. Accessed 2 April 2007.
• Hasselblad Foundation, The 2003 Hasselblad Award Winner. Accessed 2 April 2007.