Seydou Keïta’s photographs capture Malian culture during an era of radical transformation. Working as a commercial portrait photographer, he employed backdrops and props—including cars, Vespas and European clothing and accessories—that allowed sitters to construct new identities before the camera’s lens. His strikingly intimate photographs showcase his ability to draw out detail and emotion from his subjects and resonate with audiences across geographic and cultural borders.

At first practicing by photographing his friends and family, Keïta later opened his own photographic studio in downtown Bamako in 1948, one of the first in the city. His clientele were primarily middle-class residents. Keïta kept a selection of fashionable props that customers could pose with, as if their own, against bold patterned backgrounds. At the time, Keïta’s portraiture was intimately connected to ideas of modernity; his studio became a place to explore new ways of fashioning the self.

This groundbreaking publication, which accompanies an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, draws on photography, personal ephemera and textiles to explore the social and political realities of the period. Richly illustrated and supported with texts from leading scholars and writers, this book is the essential volume on Seydou Keïta.

Born in Bamako, Mali, Seydou Keïta (1921/23–2001) spent his youth working as a carpenter, following in the footsteps of his father. However, after receiving a Kodak Brownie Flash camera as a gift from his uncle in 1935, Keïta shifted his focus to photography. In 1948 he opened his studio in downtown Bamako, making portraits of thousands of Malians over more than a decade. After Mali gained independence in 1962, Keïta was hired as the new government’s official photographer. His work was not well known outside of Western Africa until 1991, when a selection of his studio portraits were exhibited, albeit anonymously, in New York City.