Art

Soungalo Malé

Soungalo Malé
Soungalo Malé

Malé’s first job was as an assistant to a team of French topographers in the city of San in the South East of Mali. This career came to an end in the 1950s when he discovered photography. Moving to Bamako, Malé initially worked for the great Seydou Keita, before opening the first photography studio in San in 1958. As well as working within this static studio, Malé travelled the countryside with a portable studio and darkroom loaded onto a truck. He would set up a makeshift studio, positioning his sitters sometimes against a wall or a patterned backdrop and take carefully considered portraits, or more candid shots of people at home or work. This movement around the countryside has links with the way in which late 19th and early 20th century photographers in the West would earn a living by travelling to areas where there was no local photographer or to fairs and the seaside, and set up studio for a day or two. Through Malé’s adoption of this itinerant practice, we are able to see images of country people at important moments in their lives from the 1950s onwards.

Biography

Born in 1920 in Mali. Died in 2002 in Mali.

Trained with Seydou Keita in Bamako, Mali before opening his own studio in San in 1958.

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