EMBODYING RELATION, art photography in Mali

360pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Duke University Press, Durham & London, 2020

ISBN: 9781478006626

Allison Moore discusses of history 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. Also covered is the establishment in 1994 of the Bamako Biennale, the post-fame careers of Seydou Keïta and Malick 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.

"Allison Moore's Embodying Relation examines the history of the Bamako art photography movement through its institutions and its aesthetics and the profound effect of transnational encounters on the agency of art photographers in Mali. She provides art historians with a comprehensive analysis of the most important site of photography discourse in Africa, thus bridging the disciplinary boundaries that usually narrate African cultural production outside the pale of art history. Research in photography in Africa provides a great platform for linking African art history to global art history by locating both in a coeval contemporaneity. As such, the importance of Moore's orientation for art history cannot be overemphasized.” Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, author of Making History: African Collectors and the Canon of African Art

Allison Moore has a PhD in Art History from the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and has published in numerous journals and exhibition catalogues.