Malick Sidibé

Malick Sidibé

After much research into the work of modern day photographers, capturing more high fashion images within the studio, for my next piece of research i have chosen to look back in time slightly. Malick Sidibé is a photographer who has documented a period in West African history mainly through capturing portraits. was awarded the Hassleblad award in 2003.

"In his portraits and documentary photography, he has uniquely captured the atmosphere and vitality of an African capital in a period of great effervescence."

http://www.hasselbladfoundation.org/malick-sidibe/

Although not all his images have been captured within a studio, it is interesting too still look at what the people are actually doing in the images. Documentary photography is probably something which appeals to me more than studio portraiture, as capturing natural behavoiur rather than telling a model or the subject what to do in an image is something which i find comes with greater ease. 
Documentary photography especially in the form of portraits could arguably be seen as the more interesting one for a viewer to look at as appose so a set up studio shoot, where the model is almost acting, in order to create exactly what the photographer wants. However a disadvantage with this kind of photography when creating portraits is there's very often a loss of strong eye contact with the camera, which is one element makes studio portraits so striking. 

Malik sidibe has captured a vast range of both studio photography and images in various other scenes, all of which, capture the west African culture of that time. 

Obviously the images being in black and white were not intentionally changed to be like this. The photographer has used a black and white camera. I think this is a very striking and successful image, this makes me want to create black and white images for my final outcome. Although this image and many of the images i am going to present in this blog post are infact taken in Malick Sidibe's studio, the documentary style still comes through in the heavily patterned fabrics and clothes used in the images. He has not directed the shoot in any sense as in dress the subjects, these will have been their own clothes. This was the fashion of the time. 

http://www.thefader.com/2012/03/13/malick-sidibes-portraits-of-mali/

http://www.afronova.com/malick-sidibe.html

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/want-new-territory-conquer-fictional-energies-art-have-penetrated-factual

http://www.tumblr.com/search/malick+sidibe

with these two final images, it is interesting to note the shadows on the wall behind the subjects of the image. These shadows suggest a use of a flash or studio lighting.