Biography of Malick SIDIBé

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Biography :

Malick Sidibé born in 1936 is a Malian photographer.


Malick Sidibé (born 1935 or 1936) is Malian photographer noted for his black-and-white studies of popular culture in the 1960s in Bamako. He was born in Soloba, Mali and completed his studies in design and jewelry in the École des Artisans Soudanais (now the Institut National des Arts) in Bamako. In 1955, he undertook an apprenticeship at Gérard Guillat-Guignard's Photo Service Boutique, also known as Gégé la pellicule.

In 1958, he opened his own studio (Studio Malick) in Bamako and specialized in documentary photography, focussing particularly on the youth culture of the Malian capital. In the 1970s, he turned towards the making of studio portraits.

Sidibé was able to increase his reputation through the first meetings on African photography in Mali in 1994. His work is now exhibited in Europe (for example, the Fondation Cartier in Paris), the United States and Japan.

In 2003, Malick Sidibé received the Hasselblad Award for photography.


Major Shows

Museum of Contemporary Art (solo), Chicago, USA , 1996
Centre d’Art Contemporain (solo), Geneva, Switzerland (solo), 2000
Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (solo), Rome, Italy (solo), 2001
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (solo), 2001
You look beautiful like that : The Portrait of Photographs of Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, USA; UCLA Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach FL, USA; National Portrait Gallery, London, Great Britain; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, MA, USA, (2001-2003)
Musée Pincé, Angers (solo), France, 2003
Hasselblad Center (solo), Göteborg Museum of Art, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2003-2004
CAV Coimbra Visual Arts Centre (solo), Coimbra, Portugal. 2004
Museet for Fotokunst. Brandts Klaedefabrik (solo), Odense, Denmark, 2004



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