Sanlé Sory poster · the man on the motorbike

The man sits astride a motorbike in profile, head turned back to the lens. Dark suit open over a patterned shirt, round sunglasses, both hands on the handlebars. Headlamp and mirror catch the studio light, and the machine fills the whole width of the picture.

Two backdrops meet behind him. On the left a painted canvas shows a trailing plant in an urn set on a balustrade. On the right hangs a plain drape, and the floor mixes small tiles with large diamonds. Those painted grounds are the signature of the Volta Photo studio, opened by Sanlé Sory in Bobo-Dioulasso in 1960, the year Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso, became independent. His mark is printed at the foot of the poster, VOLTA PHOTO · S. SORY · BP.139 BOBO DIOULASSO.

Risograph printing translates a photograph rather than reproducing it. Continuous tone becomes a screen of dots, greys become ink laid tight or loose, and a single colour carries the whole image. The green of this poster does that work. The studio cartouche is printed in a second ink, in black.

A2 format, 420 × 594 mm, on Munken 150 gsm uncoated matt paper. €40 including tax, shipped rolled in a tube. This is a printed poster, not a photographic print. Sanlé Sory's prints, numbered and museum framed, are shown on the artist's page.