Portraits de brousse et de studio #11

The son of a merchant, born in 1943 in Podor, on the banks of the Senegal River, Oumar Ly discovered photography as a young teenager by watching the soldiers stationed in the town's fort. He bought himself a Kodak Brownie and learned the trade from Demba Assane Sy, a nurse and photographer. When Senegal, newly independent, set out to provide identity papers for its people, the administration hired him and sent him across the bush to photograph its citizens. He travelled through the villages around Podor and brought back unique and rare photographs, in which a mat, a wrap cloth, a wooden crate or the white door of the sub-prefect's 2CV serves as a backdrop, with the landscape quietly slipping into the background. For the identity cards, the administration kept only a tight crop of the face; it is the full images, with their improvised settings, that make up his work today. In 1963, he opened Studio Thioffy in the market district of Podor, then a small, prosperous trading town on the Mauritanian border. With his painted backdrops and props, he tenderly chronicled the celebrations and fashions of his hometown: notables in boubous, families, yé-yé youth, public events. He worked there until his death in 2016, never leaving his region. Brought to light by the association Marie-Louise & Fils, his "bush portraits" were collected in a book published by Filigranes in 2009. His photographs are now part of collections such as that of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and form a precious archive of life in Podor and the surrounding villages.