Artist Database

Malick Sidibé is an artist best known for photographing the youth culture of newly independent Bamako: dance parties, weddings and social gatherings where young Malians embraced Western fashion and dances imported from Europe and Cuba. His informal and spontaneous portraits captured the optimism of the period.

He first studied jewellery design at the School of Sudanese Craftsmen in Bamako, graduating in 1955. After graduating, he found work decorating the Photo Service shop of Gérard Guillat, also known as Gégé la Pellicule. Guillat soon offered him a photography apprenticeship in 1956, leading to Sidibé opening Studio Malick in the centre of Bamako in Bagadadji.

Sidibé's work gained international recognition in the mid-1990s, following the inaugural Rencontres de Bamako in 1994 and a solo exhibition at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris the following year. He received the Hasselblad Award in 2003 and, in 2007, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale, the first photographer and first African artist so honoured. He received the International Center of Photography's Infinity Award in 2008.

Sidibé died in Bamako in 2016. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, among others.