Africa Is a Country

Maestro Sidibé

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Maestro Sidibé

By
Teju Cole

The author, also a photographer, writes about receiving the sad news that Malick Sidibé, the Malian master photographer, has died, at the age of 80.

"Regardez-moi," 1962. By Malick Sidibe.

I have never been to Bamako, never been to Malick Sidibé’s studio in that city. In the later years, he would receive visitors, and his son would take their pictures against those famous Sidibé backdrops. But the heyday of the work had been in the 60s and 70s in that post-independence ferment that one also heard in the silvered and world-knowing tunes of the Super Rail Band and Boubacar Traoré, that galaxy of greatness.

The Maestro Sidibé, the Eye of Bamako, was blind in one eye. That is a time-saver for a photographer, to see the world with monocular vision as a camera does. An optical faculty ever-ready to pounce, economical as a cat.

Observe the immediacy of “Regardez-moi!” Could a photograph be more audible than this? This young man of fifty four years ago is full of life, zest, display, and joy, and the Eye of Bamako catches with unerring sympathy that irrepressible presence. Sidibé prised photographic practice from its classic studio precincts, where it had been brought to perfection by Seydou Keïta. They were of the line of great duos that sometimes haunt the arts, Picasso and Matisse, Hokusai and Utamaro. Keïta worked during the day. Sidibé made the night real: parties, dancing, flash photos. He was the obverse, keyed in to the unexpected point of view.

And the stamina! “At night, from midnight to 4 am or 6 am, I went from one party to another. I could go to four different parties. If there were only two, it was like having a rest. But if there were four, you couldn’t miss any. If you were given four invitations, you had to go. You couldn’t miss them.” He drank the full draught, and retained the evidence.

In “Je veux être seule,” a beautiful young woman has asked specifically to be shown without the man who was in the picture. The photographer is at her service, and so the man is dodged away into a ghostly nothing. No questions asked.

Malick Sidibé made many great pictures of African modernity. They will outlive him, and us. He showed us as we were, between the desire for solitude (Je veux être seule) and the wish to be seen and celebrated (Regardez-moi!), between the contained and the exuberant. All of it is there.

I received the sad news today that Malick Sidibé has died, at the age of 80. May his soul rest in peace.

Further Reading

After the uprising

Years into Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict, the rebellion faces internal fractures, waning support, and military pressure—raising the question of what future, if any, lies ahead for Ambazonian aspirations.

In search of Saadia

Who was Saadia, and why has she been forgotten? A search for one woman’s story opens up bigger questions about race, migration, belonging, and the gaps history leaves behind.

Binti, revisited

More than two decades after its release, Lady Jaydee’s debut album still resonates—offering a window into Tanzanian pop, gender politics, and the sound of a generation coming into its own.

The bones beneath our feet

A powerful new documentary follows Evelyn Wanjugu Kimathi’s personal and political journey to recover her father’s remains—and to reckon with Kenya’s unfinished struggle for land, justice, and historical memory.

What comes after liberation?

In this wide-ranging conversation, the freedom fighter and former Constitutional Court justice Albie Sachs reflects on law, liberation, and the unfinished work of building a just South Africa.

The cost of care

In Africa’s migration economy, women’s labor fuels households abroad while their own needs are sidelined at home. What does freedom look like when care itself becomes a form of exile?

The memory keepers

A new documentary follows two women’s mission to decolonize Nairobi’s libraries, revealing how good intentions collide with bureaucracy, donor politics, and the ghosts of colonialism.

Making films against amnesia

The director of the Oscar-nominated film ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat’ reflects on imperial violence, corporate warfare, and how cinema can disrupt the official record—and help us remember differently.