On View August 22, 2026 – December 13, 2026

What relevance does portrait photography carry today?

This exhibition features photography works by six modern and contemporary artists of African descent, made between 1963 and 2024, that explore culture, identity, memory, and modern life. On loan from the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, it is the first exhibition of its kind at the Stanley Museum of Art, reimagining the notion of an archive to include personal, familial, and community collections depicting the past.

Spanning the colonial and independence periods in Africa, historic portraits from public archives often depict family and friends and thus hold deeply personal significance. The exhibition draws on strengths in the Eskenazi Museum's collection of Malick Sidibé's and Tijani Sitou's photography from the mid- to late twentieth century. Sidibé and Sitou became well known within their respective communities in Bamako and Mopti, both in Mali. Sidibé also garnered global recognition for his portraits of Malians following political independence from France in 1960, earning his fame as one of the most celebrated photographers from the African continent.

Portraiture & Archives in African Photography considers the significance of Sidibé’s and Sitou’s work today. It also traces new directions in portrait photography by contemporary artists Zohra Opoku, Ibrahima Thiam, Hassan Hajjaj, and Zanele Muholi who engage with portraiture, archives, and use photography alongside other media like textiles and painting. These six artists work in different parts of Africa— including Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Morocco, and South Africa—and the African diaspora. Today, Opoku, Thiam, Hajjaj, and Muholi also actively participate in the global art world by exhibiting in international platforms that connect their practices to larger dialogues about photography and portraiture. This exhibition offers a new take on Sidibé’s and Sitou’s legacy with Thiam—as both artist and co-curator— re-inventing their images and reinscribing them with new meaning today.

A Collaborative Exhibition

Contemporary artist Ibrahima Thiam guest curated this exhibition with Eskenazi Museum curator Allison Martino and Indiana University faculty Beth Buggenhagen. This was the first time that the Eskenazi Museum invited an artist to serve as an exhibition co-curator. Through this collaborative process, Thiam sought to reinvent the portraiture tradition in Africa to provide renewed appreciation for African photographic archives. This tradition encompasses the work of renowned photographers such as Malick Sidibé and Tijani Sitou, as well as photographs dating back to the arrival of the camera in Saint-Louis, Senegal, in 1862. The curators prioritize Thiam’s vision to reimagine African photographic archives by placing communities and families, as they pictured themselves, at the center.

Thiam and Buggenhagen began working together in Senegal in 2016, and Thiam first visited Indiana University in 2019 to participate in a roundtable about his work. He returned in the summer of 2024 for a residency at the Eskenazi Museum of Art to study Sidibé’s and Sitou’s photography and to work on curating the exhibition. Stanley Museum of Art curator Cory Gundlach met Thiam at Dakar in 2022. After acquiring Thiam’s work for the Stanley Museum of Art in 2023, he began planning with Thiam and Martino to bring this exhibition to Iowa. Thiam, Buggenhagen, and Martino worked together to select photographs for the exhibition at Indiana. The exhibition at Iowa also includes Gundlach’s recent acquisition of work by Hassan Hajjaj and Zanele Muholi. Thiam collaborated on exhibition design with staff at the Stanley and Eskenazi museums, where he also served as curator-in-residence. His vision drove the exhibition narrative, foregrounding the perspective of a contemporary photographer.

_{Acknowledgments}

_{The Stanley Museum of Art and Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University express gratitude and thanks to Malick Sitou and Dr. Candace Keller for their contributions to this exhibition. Son of photographer Tijani Sitou, Malick Sitou allowed the reproduction of his father’s work in the creation of new artwork by Ibrahima Thiam. Keller graciously shared her expertise on Malick Sidibé’s and Tijani Sitou’s photography. Indiana University undergraduate students Sam Berensztein, Diana Bonilla, Hanh Bui, and Marie Jones completed curatorial and graphic design projects related to this exhibition as part of their summer 2024 internships at the Eskenazi Museum.}

_{At the Eskenazi Museum of Art, this exhibition received support from Indiana University’s Institute for Advanced Study, College Arts and Humanities Institute, Office of the Vice President for International Affairs, and the Walter Center for Career Achievement, as well as the Raymond and Laura Wielgus Endowed Curatorship for the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and Indigenous Art of the Americas.  At the Stanley Museum of Art, this exhibition loan and associated programming were made possible with support from the Stanley-UI Foundation Support Organization.}