  About the Artwork
  
  
  When photography arrived in Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century, Africans not only took up the art as a profession, they also began to frequent local studios to have their portraits taken. No African studio photographer achieved greater fame among art collectors in Europe and the United States than the Malian Seydou Keïta. From 1948 to 1964 he operated a studio in Bamako-Koura, a new and lively part of the town inhabited by people employed in the colonial economy and the educated African elite. Keïta's pictures capture the aspirations and fantasies of his sitters, who in collaboration with him created images demonstrating their cosmopolitan outlook. Clothing and accoutrements ranging from gloves and wristwatches to hats, at times borrowed from the photographer, and props such as bicycles, sewing machines, and even motorcycles signaled the sitters' modern ways of life.
 
This young woman poses with a radio that was part of Keïta's studio equipment and appears in many of his portraits taken in the mid-1950s. Her man's watch, too, belonged to the photographer. The dress of colorfully printed cloth produced in European textile mills for the African market, an elegantly draped head tie, and fine silver jewelry project her elegance and sophistication. She leans slightly forward and through her pose seems to appropriate the radio, this important means of connecting her to the world, to what happened in the Bamako, the French colonies, and Europe.
 
In its original form, this photograph, which demonstrates Keïta's superb eye and technical skills, was no larger than a postcard and would have been part of the young woman's photographic album or a present to her friends. Printed from an original negative by the atelier of Pierre Salaün in France to museum standards and in a much larger size, this image brings into focus the way in which Africans utilized new media and techniques and embraced modernity.
 
 
Christraud M. Geary
 
From Through African Eyes: The European in African Art, 1500 to Present (Detroit, 2009)
  
  
  Title
  Untitled #851
  
  
  Artwork Date
  between 1956 and 1957
  
  Artist
  Seydou Keita
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1923 - 2001
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  African
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
  ----------
  
  
  Medium
  Gelatin silver print
  
  
  Dimensions
  Image: 22 × 15 5/8 inches (55.9 × 39.7 cm)
  Sheet: 24 × 20 inches (61 × 50.8 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Photographs
  
  
  Department
  Prints, Drawings &amp; Photographs
  
  
  Credit
  Museum Purchase, Africa, Oceania and the Indigenous Americas General Fund
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  2006.113
  
  
  Copyright
  Courtesy of the Association Seydou Keïta, Bamako, Sean Kelly Gallery, New York and JM Patras, Paris
