Abderramane Sakaly (1926 - 1988)
Abderramane Sakaly was born in Saint Louis in Senegal by Moroccan parents. Quite young he learned photography at the studio of Meïssa Gaye and Mix Guève in Saint Louis. In 1956 he settled in Mali, in the Medina Koura quarter of the capital, Bamako.

Here his studio on the busy Route de Koulikoro very quickly became a popular place for the middle classes to go whenever they wanted to pose in front of a lens - a position held by his studio until his death in 1988, when his son Naby Sakaly took over the studio. When I visited the studio in 1994, his negatives were still placed at a shelf in old cardboard boxes, scarcely protected from the dust brought in from the desert by the Harmattan.

• See some of Abderramane Sakaly's photos