As a woman who was raised and born in the African continent, my biggest inspiration was Malick Sidibe since I was 12 years old. Sidibé's photographs in his studio made Bamako youth so stylish, au courant, and universal, it was easy to identify with them. The youth in Bamako saw themselves in them, and they wanted to be in them, because the photographs made them look like the rock and roll idols and movie stars they wanted to be.
When independence arrived in 1960, people's relation to photography, as to many other things in Bamako, began to change.
By leaving the studio to follow young people outside, by insisting on storytelling and realism, I wanted to portray the new Bamakois as actors in situations and beyond traditions. I wanted to revisit the youth of the Malian culture and our teenage years in Bamako: the Africa I knew. In other words, each scene tells a story located in space and time that serves to empower the subject. Each man and woman we met told us that they never had an outdoor fashion photoshoot so we wanted to inspire the following generation to take ownership of their own narratives through my lens.
