Seydou Keïta was a Malian photographer known for his portraits of people and families he took at his portrait photography studio in Mali's capital, Bamako, in the 1950s. His photographs are widely acknowledged not only as a record of Malian society but also as pieces of art. Keïta was born in Bamako, Mali in 1921 and died in 2001. His photographs have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Foundation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris. In 2016, the Grand Palais in Paris held a major retrospective of his work. Keïta's work has also been the subject of several books, including 'Seydou Keïta' (2014) and 'Seydou Keïta: From Bamako to Paris' (2018).