Le plein chez Total, route de Banfora

Night falls on a Total filling station on the Banfora road. Four young men in flared trousers and platform shoes gather around the pump and a parked estate car; one grips the fuel nozzle like a stage prop, another keeps his sunglasses on after dark. Sanlé Sory, chronicler of Bobo-Dioulasso's nights and of the Volta Jazz, takes his Rolleiflex out of the Volta Photo studio here: the heavy sky and the station lights build a film set for the youth of the seventies, framed square and never cropped.

A rare large format (image 55 x 55 cm), this limited edition print of 1/5 is a digigraphie on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315 g paper, in a museum frame with museum glass. Rediscovered in 2011 by Florent Mazzoleni, the work is now held at MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the V&A and LACMA. A milestone of African photography, this black and white print features in Generation Volta at Sakana Gallery, Donostia, until 1 October 2026.

Print details

• Edition : 1/5
• Image : 55 × 55 cm
• Paper : 60 × 70 cm
• Technique : Digigraphie print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315 g paper
• Framing : Museum framing, museum glass

This cinematic night under the Total sign shows Sanlé Sory leaving the studio for the roadside, camera on flash. Images like this, long confined to the family albums of Bobo-Dioulasso, now hang in the great museums: MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Victoria and Albert Museum and LACMA hold his work. It is one of the sharpest turns in the history of African photography, which moved in half a century from the neighbourhood studio to the public collection.

All works by Sanlé Sory · Exhibition catalogue (PDF)