Label TextA late work by Malick Sidibé, Vue de Dos (Back View) is part of a series of portraits
depicting women with their backs to the camera that the photographer began in 2001.
Rather than focusing on facial expressions, the work invites the viewer to consider body
language, clothing, and posture as signifiers of identity. By photographing his sitters from
behind, Sidibé raises questions about how we define individuals based on their personal
presentation. His sitters reject the gaze of the camera and present a counterpoint to the
western tradition of the nude female figure. In this wryly humorous image, the woman
wears a shirt advertising the website of Seydou Keïta, a contemporary of Sidibé and his
competitor in the city of Bamako.
Sidibé made his name as a street photographer, recording the people of Bamako as Mali
transformed from a French colony to an independent nation. A fixture of the city’s
nightlife, the photographer roamed the streets, documenting dancing and celebration
within the quickly modernizing city. In 1958, he founded Studio Malick on a side street in
the Bagadadji neighborhood of Bamako. Sidibé’s studio was a place to see and be seen,
open at night and into the early morning hours. The women in the Vues de Dos portraits
are models commissioned by the photographer, a change from early in the artist’s
career, when his photographs were impromptu moments captured outside of the studio.
DimensionsSheet: 19 3/4 x 15 1/2 in. (50.2 x 39.4 cm)
Image: 13 1/4 x 13 1/4 in. (33.7 x 33.7 cm)
Image: 13 1/4 x 13 1/4 in. (33.7 x 33.7 cm)
Accession Number 2025.36
Classificationsphotograph
