Les yeux revolver

Two gazes that do not blink, aimed straight down the lens. In the thick of a night dance, a young man in a pale hat, shirt open at the chest and flared trousers raises one hand mid-move; beside him, a friend in a white headband, tee shirt and wide-belted jeans holds the same nerve. Behind them, dancers in printed cloth and wild grass at the edge of the frame: this is the Bobo-Dioulasso night Sanlé Sory photographed relentlessly.

The print is the first of a limited edition of 8, a Digigraphie on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315 g paper with museum framing and museum glass. Founder of the Volta Photo studio in 1960 and a defining voice of African photography, collected by MoMA and the V&A, Sanlé Sory headlines Generation Volta at Sakana Gallery, Donostia, until 1 October 2026. A black and white print from an uncropped square negative.

Print details

• Edition : 1/8
• Image : 36 × 36 cm
• Paper : 40 × 50 cm
• Technique : Digigraphie print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315 g paper
• Framing : Museum framing, museum glass

These two dancers staring down the lens in the middle of a night dance came close to vanishing. After 1983, the studio archive, hundreds of thousands of negatives, lay in trunks, and Sanlé Sory had begun to destroy part of it. His meeting with the author Florent Mazzoleni in 2011 saved the collection and reopened a whole chapter of the history of African photography. Without it, this steel gaze would never have reached us.

All works by Sanlé Sory · Exhibition catalogue (PDF)