Fan de Jimi Hendrix

A portrait seen from behind, and the back does the talking: on the sitter's white jacket, a hand-painted portrait of Jimi Hendrix, afro and inked features, sits above the inscription “Jimi Endrix”. A patterned wrapper falls to the sandals, planted on the graphic tiled floor of the Volta Photo studio; the head turns to profile, a lamp edges into the frame. In the Bobo-Dioulasso where Sanlé Sory also photographed the Volta Jazz nights, the idols travelled as far as the clothes.

The limited edition print, numbered 3/8, is a digigraphie on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315 g paper, with museum framing and museum glass. Rediscovered in 2011, Sanlé Sory's work has entered MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the V&A and LACMA, in the front rank of African photography. This black and white print is on view in Generation Volta at Sakana Gallery, Donostia, until 1 October 2026.

Print details

• Edition : 3/8
• Image : 36 × 36 cm
• Paper : 40 × 50 cm
• Technique : Digigraphie print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315 g paper
• Framing : Museum framing, museum glass

Seen from behind, this sitter wears a hand-painted portrait of Jimi Hendrix on his jacket: proof, in a single image, that the youth of Bobo-Dioulasso lived fully inside the world of the 1970s. Far from a borrowed modernity, Sanlé Sory's studio photography shows idols travelling as far as the clothes. This too is what the history of African photography has set straight: these studios were not archiving a tradition, they were recording a pop culture, cosmopolitan and entirely contemporary.

All works by Sanlé Sory · Exhibition catalogue (PDF)