Mali Djeli

Two kinds of music share the frame at the Volta Photo studio in Bobo-Dioulasso. On the left, a young man in a hat and oversized glasses, wearing an Adidas tee, balances a boombox on his knee; beside him, an older musician in an embroidered boubou cradles a stringed instrument with a long curved neck. Behind them stretches the painted backdrop of a villa facade, a fixture of the studio Sanlé Sory opened in 1960, the year of independence. Shot on a Rolleiflex in square 6x6 and never cropped, this double portrait records a dialogue between two generations.

This limited edition print (4/8) is a digigraphie on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315 g paper, delivered in a museum frame with museum glass. Rediscovered in 2011 by Florent Mazzoleni, Sanlé Sory's work is now held at MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the V&A and LACMA. A landmark 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 : 4/8
• Image : 36 × 36 cm
• Paper : 40 × 50 cm
• Technique : Digigraphie print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315 g paper
• Framing : Museum framing, museum glass

A traditional musician with his stringed instrument, a boy with a boombox: this face-off between two kinds of music could have vanished. After 1983 the studio's archive, several hundred thousand negatives, lay in trunks, and Sanlé Sory had already destroyed part of it. In 2011 his meeting with Florent Mazzoleni saved the collection and reopened a whole chapter of the history of African photography. Without that rediscovery, this studio photography from Bobo-Dioulasso would never have reached us.

All works by Sanlé Sory · Exhibition catalogue (PDF)