Untitled #336

Artist Seydou Keïta Malian, 1923–2001

Date1952–1955

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 number2007.8.2

On View

Not on view

Label TextOriginally 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 the capital city, Bamako, and many people had portraits made to send to family in outlying regions.

Keïta’s photos constitute an essential record of an emerging urban lifestyle. His images mark changing ideals of beauty, success, and individual identity in the postcolonial era. Keïta provided a platform from which he and his clients experimented with an unprecedented variety of visual elements as they reinvented themselves for posterity. Untitled (#336), likely a father and son, offers a compelling juxtaposition of tradition and modernity, and a portrait of changes during the course of a generation.ProvenanceCreated Bamako, Mali, 1952–1955; 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, "Global Artists Exploring Identity Far From Home," in Preview: The Magazine of the North Carolina Museum of Art (Winter 2008), illus. (detail), 10.

Kinsey Katchka, entry for Untitled #336, in North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections, rev. ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 2010), 574, illus. 575.

North Carolina Museum of Art, "The People's Collection," (Raleigh, NC; North Carolina Museum of Art, 2024), illus. (color) 133.
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," October 7, 2022–present. Object Rights Statement

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