Untitled #277

Artist Seydou Keïta Malian, 1923–2001

Date1956–1957

MediumGelatin-silver print

Dimensionspaper: 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm)
image: 22 × 15 1/2 in. (55.9 × 39.4 cm)
frame: 28 1/4 × 22 1/4 in. (71.8 × 56.5 cm)

ClassificationsPhotography

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Friends of Photography

Object number2007.8.1

On View

Not on view

Label TextKeïta’s images mark changing ideals of beauty, success, and identity in the postcolonial era as he and his clients reinvented themselves for future generations. This photograph shows one of the artist’s signature poses, easily recognized by those living in Mali’s capital city, Bamako.

Originally a carpenter, Seydou Keïta began taking photographs in a makeshift, backyard studio in the late 1940s and continued to make studio portraits until 1962. The opening of Keïta’s studio coincided with the onset of rapid urbanization as people moved from the countryside to Bamako, and many people had portraits made to send to family in outlying regions.
["The People's Collection, Reimagined," 2022]ProvenanceCreated Bamako, Mali, 1956–1957; collection of the artist; the artist’s estate, 2001; [Sean Kelly Gallery, New York]; sold to NCMA, 2007.Published ReferencesLinda Dougherty and Kinsey Katchka, "Compelling Portraits: Recent Acquisitions Purchased by the Friends of Photography," in Preview: The Magazine of the North Carolina Museum of Art (September/October 2007), briefly discussed 12-13, illus. (b-w) 13.

Kinsey Katchka, entry for Untitled #277, in North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections, rev. ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 2010), 574, illus. 575.
Exhibition HistoryRaleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "Far from Home," February 17-July 13, 2008.

Raleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "The People's Collection, Reimagined," April 17–October 8, 2023.
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