Learn about the people and place sof Mali.

Seydou Keita was born in Bamako, Mali in 1921, then part of the colony of French Sudan and a bustling transportation hub on the route to Dakar. With a Kodak Brownie given to him by his uncle, Keita took up photography at the age of 14, going on to establish what would become Bamako's most successful portraiture enterprise of the 1950s and 60s. "Photographs, Bamako, Mali 1949-1970" draws on an expanded archive to offer over 400 portraits, mostly unpublished, from the height of the photographer's productivity in downtown Bamako. Providing lushly patterned backdrops and props that now serve to date distinct periods in his career, the artist often styled his subjects but also encouraged their active participation, hanging sample portraits around the studio as inspiration. Migratory youth, government officials, shop owners and Bamako's cultural elite all make appearances here, and while Keita's photographs served as both family record and cultural status symbol for the clients who commissioned them, these images have become a lasting visual record of Mali at that time. Seydou Keita's work made its first international appearance in 1991 and has been exhibited extensively across Europe, Japan and the United States.

It's Mali's sixth birthday and she's excited. As more and more guests arrive, so do more and more gifts. But when her presents start to push her guests out of the house, Mali has to learn an important life lesson about the things that matter most. Will she choose more presents or more family and friends? Read this delightful, beautiful book and find out! The book doesn't end when the story's over! Adults, keep reading for interactive activities to extend the lesson.

Text and photographs introduce the topography, history, society, economy, and governmental structure of Mali.

Presents a photographic introduction to the land, history, government, economy, people, and culture of the island nation.

In Embodying Relation Allison Moore examines the tensions between the local and the global in the art photography movement in Bamako, Mali, which blossomed in the 1990s after Malian photographers Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé became internationally famous and the Bamako Photography Biennale was founded. Moore traces the trajectory of Malian photography from the 1880s—when photography first arrived as an apparatus of French colonialism—to the first African studio practitioners of the 1930s and the establishment in 1994 of the Bamako Biennale, Africa's most important continent-wide photographic exhibition. In her detailed discussion of Bamakois artistic aesthetics and institutions, Moore examines the post-fame careers of Keïta and Sidibé, the biennale's structure, the rise of women photographers, cultural preservation through photography, and how Mali's shift to democracy in the early 1990s enabled Bamako's art scene to flourish. Moore shows how Malian photographers' focus on cultural exchange, affective connections with different publics, and merging of traditional cultural precepts with modern notions of art embody Caribbean philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant's notion of “relation” in ways that spark new artistic forms, practices, and communities.

Presents a photographic introduction to the land, history, government, economy, people, and culture of the African nation of Democratic Republic of Congo.