Hamidou Maiga (date unknown)
More ace African photography for your perusal – this time it’s the turn of Bamako-based photographer Hamidou Maiga, with Talking Timbuktu. This will be Jack Bell’s third exhibition of studio photography from Africa, following the success of Seydou Keïta and Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou last year.
Although the show’s title cunningly plays up the mysterious allure of Timbuktu (where Maiga trained as a mason as a young man, and ran a studio in the 1960s), the photographer was actually born in 1932 in Bobodioulasso, Burkina Faso, and has been working from photography hot-spot Bamako since 1973. Taking in everyone from villagers to dignitaries, his images offer a glimpse of some of the spectacular changes in Malian society over the last half a century, following independence from France, economic expansion and the rising popularity of Western fashions. Like the work of his contemporary and friend, Malick Sidibé, Maiga’s portraits combine evocative portrayals of individuals with a powerful sense of the ideas and dreams framing their everyday lives, in a country becoming increasingly connected with the wider world.
There’s an interview with Maiga at AnOther Magazine, available online here.
The show continues until 30th April.
Opening hours:
Wed–Sat, 12–6
Jack Bell Gallery
276 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London
SW1V 1BB
African Art in London 