The Last Interview: Seydou Keïa 1921-2001

The Last Interview Self-portrait, 1 9 4 9 s i l v e r g e l a t i n p r i n t , e d i t i o n o f 1 0 , p a p e r : 2 4 x 2 0 i n c h e s i m a g e : 2 2 x 1 5 - 1 1 2 i n c h e s ( a p p r o x i m a t e l y ) , f r a m e d : 3 2 x 2 4 - 5 / 8 i n c h e s 1921-2001 LydiG DidkhstG eydou Kei'ta was a sage, a poet o f the intimate. In his photographs, he unveiled the beauty o f each o f his models with discretion; without intending to, he wrote the history o f Bamako starting in the days before independence. None o f his photographs was shot by chance but was the product o f a very personal approach to composition . And, in spite o f that very personal feeling, each image introduced a more general discourse, one that resonated with society in the Sahel and with the world outside in the years from 1935 to 1965. Seydou Kei'ta belongs to that group o f exceptional artists who bear witness to their times. Though his work is a mixture o f delicate and rugged elements that can sometimes appear austere, everything in Seydou Keita's photographs is sensitivity and generosity. His work calls to mind Nadar, who sought, according to his own words, "to find that instant o f comprehension that puts you in touch with the sitting subject, that helps you to get an overview o f the subject and guides you toward the habits, the ideas, the character o f the person, allowing you to achieve the realization o f an intimate portrait."1 Seydou Keita's work also reminds us o f the portraits done by the Harcourt studio, through whose rooms everyone who was anyone in the artistic, political and international worlds o f Paris during the 1830s-1860s had to pass.2 In 1957 Roland Barthes wrote: "In France, one was not a significant player unless one had been photographed by the Harcourt studios," and only through the medium o f those portraits would that player "rediscover his intemporal essence."-5 Without knowing it, the individuals in Seydou Keita's clientele, in rediscovering their intemporal essence, became immortalized and entered into the legendary history o f Bamako. Mothers, fathers, married couples, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, the young and the old: with their coiffed heads, their braided hair, gathered and adorned, wearing the great formal robes called boubou, or in some fancy suit appropriate to the occasion, in the iconography o f Seydou Kei'ta, the subject accedes to the sublime and the pose becomes ritual. A new look is imposed, a new artistic expression, a new mythology . There are three sources that provide the emotional underpinnings out o f which realities and dreams are brought to view. The first is o f Seydou in his quest for immutable perfection, because for Seydou as photographer, the subject must offer the best o f himself or herself. The second is the subject who wants to achieve his or her personal dream, because, for the duration o f a sitting, he or she becomes a unique being in a privileged mo ment in time, an almost unthinkable experience in African societies in general, and the image crystalizes this mo ment and renders that intimate dream beyond time. The third source is the city o f Bamako, as it attempts to affirm its authenticity through its ancestral culture and its capacity to assimilate the influences o f the world outside. The portraits o f Seydou Kei'ta impose themselves on the viewer in a face-to-face encounter, creating an intimate dialogue that crosses geographic and cultural boundaries. Conducted with physical gestures, between bodies that resonate with the conversation, this dialogue is permanently displayed in the refined poses o f the subjects in the photographs: in an embrace J o u r n a l...