Hundreds of mourners on Saturday gathered in the Malian capital, Bamako, to pay their final respects to the late photographer Malick Sidibe, who won international acclaim with his vibrant black-and-white images that captured daily life in his native nation.
The send off for Sidibe, whose coffin was draped in the national flag, took place on a soccer pitch in a working class neighborhood of Bamako, with soldiers giving the iconic artist full honors, as several women in the crowd began weeping.
Young Malian photographers in attendance expressed their sadness at the loss of a mentor.
Photo: Reuters
“It is incredibly sad for young photographers,” freelance photographer Ousmane Diarra said. “It was Malick who bought me my first camera. He was really our guide.”
After the 80-year-old’s death was announced on Friday, French Minister of Culture and Communications Audrey Azoulay hailed him as “the father of African photography.”
Sidibe’s vibrant images of life in Bamako in the 1960s, when Mali gained independence from France, were a social commentary chronicling both popular culture and traditional society.
He captured candid images in his studio as well as on the streets of Bamako, including at nightclubs, beaches and sporting events.
He was the first African to have a solo exhibition in Paris’ prestigious Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, and his works adorn the walls of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Getty Center in Los Angeles and several other museums worldwide.
Malian Minister of Culture and Tourism N’Diaye Ramatoulaye Diallo called Sidibe “a great humanist.”
“Malick Sidibe showed us the unity, but also the diversity, of Mali through his art,” she said.
Alpha Diallo, a photographer from Guinea, who attended the funeral, said: “Mali, Africa and the entire world have lost a cultural titan.”
Sidibe’s younger brother, Tieoule Sidibe, recalled how his sibling had been “the pillar of the family, who helped all members of the community.”
After the funeral, Sidibe’s coffin was to be transferred to the village of Soloba, where he is to be buried alongside other family members.
“You can never dream of coming so far when you are from a small village and never went to school,” Sidibe said in 2009 on hearing that he had been awarded the top prize at Spain’s prestigious PHotoEspana festival.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion