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.
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: A Poetics of Relation 1
1. Unknown Photographer (Bamako, Mali) 27
2. Malian Portraiture Glamorized and Globalized 62
3. Biennale Effects: The African Photography Encounters 98
4. Bamako Becoming Photographic: An Archipelagic Art World 145
5. Creolizing the Archive: Photographers at the National Museum 171
6. Promoting Women Photographers 210
7. Errantry, the Social Body, and Photography as the Écho-monde 249
Conclusion 276
Notes 281
Bibliography 325
Index
