Born in 1943 in Nianiagara, Ibrahima Sory Sanlé lives and works in Bobo-​Dioulasso, Burkina Faso.

Ibrahima Sory Sanlé started his pho­to­graphic career in Bobo-​Dioulasso the very year his coun­try became inde­pen­dent from France in 1960 under the name of République de Haute-​Volta. As a young appren­tice work­ing with a Ghanaian boss, he learnt to work with a pho­to­graphic cham­ber, before pro­cess­ing and print­ing his own pic­tures. Like many African pho­tog­ra­phers of his gen­er­a­tion, he chose the 6x6 for­mat. He was priv­i­leged enough to doc­u­ment the fast evo­lu­tion of his own city, Bobo-​Dioulasso, then Haute-​Volta’s cul­tural and eco­nomic cap­i­tal. He cap­tured the frontal col­li­sion between mod­ern life and centuries-​old tra­di­tions from this cul­tur­ally rich and rural region.

He started his career by doc­u­ment­ing high­way wrecks in and around Bobo, trav­el­ling on motor­bike all over the region. In the mid-​1960’s, he opened up his own “Volta Photo”, soon to become the city’s finest photo stu­dio. Fully ded­i­cated to his art and work, he fol­lowed his own rule: “the more you like some­thing, the more you invest your­self in your passion”.

He worked as a reporter, a record sleeve illus­tra­tor, an offi­cial pho­tog­ra­pher but mostly as a clever stu­dio pho­tog­ra­pher. Very active, he por­trayed Bobo-​Dioulasso’s peo­ple with wit, energy and sheer pas­sion. His back­ground paint­ings, be they a mod­ern city, a beach walk­board, an air­plane or an antique col­umn were quite out­stand­ing and unlike those of any other pho­tog­ra­phers in his own country.

Be they still or mov­ing mali­ciously, his sub­jects illus­trate in many ways the remote­ness and melan­choly of African cities land­locked deep in the hearf of the con­ti­nent. They also con­vey some youth­ful exu­ber­ance in the wake of the first decades of African inde­pen­dences. His lens wit­fully reviewed the nat­ural fusion oper­at­ing between tra­di­tion and moder­nity. His black and white images truly mag­ni­fied this golden era before 24x36 for­mat and com­mon color films added up to what William Eggleston called the “demo­c­ra­tic for­est”, an end­less dilu­tion of the pho­to­graphic view within pub­lic space.

Unknown, for­got­ten or unsung, Voltaic pho­tog­ra­phy’s golden age is fully embod­ied by Sory Sanlé whose images, pre­served for many decades, dis­play some unique social and cul­tural effer­ves­cence. Adorned with some nat­ural ele­gance, his Bobo-​Dioulasso’s pho­togra­phies stand in for Renoir’s words accord­ing to which “the more local, the more universal”.