THEORY: "Malick Sidibé: Photographs" (2000)

The result, as Magnin’s book copiously documents, was a cultural episode during which African pop culture defied its hidden or secondhand status (always a Western cliche, but sometimes a legitimate label) and busted out all over the place. But not in terms of the now commonplace imagery, of “native” Africans in traditional dress bobbing and keening for the benefit of CNN. Instead, what Sidibe documented was an after-hours declaration of confident self-styling, influenced by Western modes, but made fresh by free adaptation.

Link: THEORY: “Malick Sidibé: Photographs” (2000)