Yossi Milo Announces Representation of Seydou Keïta Family Estate

Yossi Milo is pleased to announce the representation of the family estate of the Malian master photographer Seydou Keïta (b. 1921, Bamako, Mali; d. 2001, Paris, France). The gallery will debut a selection of images at the 2026 editions of Felix Art Fair in Los Angeles, CA, and the Dallas Art Fair, TX, in advance of a presentation at the gallery to take place in the coming year. The announcement of this project coincides with Seydou Keïta: A Tactile Lens, guest curated by Catherine E. McKinley and currently on view at Brooklyn Museum–the artist’s largest North American, and most comprehensive global exhibition to date–and with the inclusion of other rare works by Keïta in Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination at the Museum of Modern Art, NY, curated by Oluremi Onabanjo.

 

This partnership centers on prints created from a portfolio of never-before-seen negatives held by Keïta and preserved by the family after his death. Unveiled for the first time at the Brooklyn Museum, these images, dating from the 1940s to the 1970s, shed light on the lesser-known side of Seydou Keïta’s oeuvre, and offer deeper insight on the artist’s image-making practice. Together, they expand our understanding of Keïta’s life, studio, and personal experience, enriching the legacy of modernist photographic history.

 

Seydou Keïta documented a critical chapter in West African history—one of immense hope, politically and socially—in a period defined by a rapidly expanding modern world and a new sense of Bamakois identity. The artist documented Malian society from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, an era marked by transformation and aspirations for independent statehood. A master at lighting and composition, Keïta has a unique ability to capture the tactile qualities of his sitters—from their fashion and choice of accessories to expressions of inner consciousness and self-presentation. In collaboration with his subjects, he sculpted their poses, clothing, and style, forming monuments to their selfhood. When they first reached Western viewers in the early 1990s, his images drew unprecedented attention in the worlds of art, music, fashion, design, and popular media, forever changing the global cultural landscape. Today, these bold and engaging portraits continue to invite viewers into direct dialogue with Keita’s sitters.

 

Keïta was born around 1921 to a Malinke family in Bamako-Coura, or New Bamako, a growing colonial commercial center within the historic Malian city. His childhood saw emerging liberation struggles across the continent and growing expressions of modernism, as Bamako served as the capital of French Soudan and, subsequently, of the newly independent Mali in 1960. 

 

Keïta first received a camera as a gift from his uncle as an adolescent.  Largely self-taught, he began an ambulant practice. In 1935, became a studio partner with his mentor, Mountaga Dembélé (1919–2004), Mali’s first professional photographer. Keïta opened his own studio in 1948 in front of his family home in Bamako-Coura, becoming Mali’s second photographer. The studio became a destination for people from all levels of Malian society, welcoming not just the elite citizens of Bamako but also remote villagers, international travelers, and those passing through on the Dakar-Niger railroad. Keïta’s work is notable for capturing how the people in his studio saw themselves, allowing for a playful self-expression backgrounded by increasing political tensions and rapid evolutions in the government. His studio offered props, including European and Malian clothing, motorbikes, Western watches, and novelties. Through the years, Keïta developed his very own style of portrait photography and a new modernist expression. 

 

In 1963, Keïta was enlisted to work for the newly independent Socialist Republic of Mali. Forced to relinquish his studio, he documented state affairs and performed forensics for increasingly punitive governments until 1968, when he retired to work in camera and automotive repairs. In May 1991, the exhibition Africa Explores: Twentieth Century African Arts opened at the Center for African Arts in New York, where Keïta first debuted to Western audiences. In 1994, the Fondation Cartier in Paris presented Keïta’s first solo exhibition, which rocked the art and photography world, cementing him as the premiere African studio photographer of the twentieth century. The exhibition positioned Keïta as a peer of noted photographers such as Irving Penn, August Sander, and Richard Avedon, his contemporaries in portrait photography, and created enormous interest in Keïta’s work.