The MSU Museum is hosting a new exhibit, "STUDIO/ ATELIER/ FOTOTALAYƆRƆLA: Five Photographers from Mali," an exploration of photography in Mali spanning from the 1940s to the 1990s.
Through portraits and documentary photographs, the archives featured in this exhibition capture fluctuating trends, cultural festivals and political events during and after the region’s transition from colonial French West Africa to the independent nation state of Mali.
The exhibition is anchored in the collaborative Malian-U.S. partnership, The Archive of Malian Photography. Funded by the British Library and National Endowment for the Humanities since 2011, a conservation team in Bamako—Mali’s capital—has been working with MSU to clean, scan, catalog and rehouse more than 100,000 photographic negatives from the archives of professional photographers Mamadou Cissé, Adama Kouyaté, Abdourahmane Sakaly, Malick Sidibé and Tijani Sitou for long-term preservation and access.
“The museum is honored to host this beautiful exhibition of studio photography from Mali,” said Mark Auslander, MSU Museum director. “This West African nation has one of the world’s most vibrant and creative photographic traditions, and we are pleased to help showcase the important work being done to protect and preserve this precious patrimony, through the international partnership of the Archives for Malian Photography.”
“Five Photographers from Mali” is on view in the MSU Museum’s Ground Floor Gallery until October 2018.