Paper short abstract:

Young photographers in Bamako are on the move: within and beyond the city, between social milieus and photographic genres. This paper looks at how young photographers make a living and express themselves within the urban photographic landscape.

Paper long abstract:

Bamako looks back on a long and strong photographic history. Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe - two of the most celebrated African photographers worldwide - lived and worked in this city. With others they left behind an important visual legacy of the changing everyday city life, which unfolded around them between the late colonial and the first decades of independent era. With the inauguration of the continent's oldest biennial of photography in 1994, Bamako's photographic landscape transformed itself: different institutions for promoting photography were initiated and a small group of photographers started to engage in so called art photography. In the shadow of Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibe younger generations of photographers started their careers.

This paper considers the youngest generation of professional photographers in Bamako and how they try to get by and express themselves within a professional field that is contested by new digital technologies and a strong competition in a country that finds itself still in a political, economic and social volatile situation after the coup in 2012 and its aftermath.

This paper presents selected works and discusses how three chroniclers of today develop visual perspectives on the city of Bamako and beyond by moving back and forth on the urban rural continuum.