Six decades and a reported million frames later, Burkinabé legend Sanlé Sory gets a fresh showcase of the moment he swapped black and white for colour.
Burkina Faso has one of Africa's great visual storytellers in Sanlé Sory, and a new exhibition is putting the spotlight on the moment he went full colour. Over roughly six decades, the Burkinabé photographer is said to have shot around a million images, building a vast portrait of a country and a continent in motion.
Sory is best known for capturing the people of his home country as they lived through rapid change: the style, the swagger, the nights out and the everyday moments. His lens made ordinary Burkinabé life look like the main event, and the new show asks what shifted when colour entered the frame.
The exhibition's title is a command to join in, 'You have to dance like everybody else!' The line suits an artist whose work is about community, rhythm and belonging. Colour brought a new energy to that vision. Clothes, backdrops and settings became louder and more expressive, and the people in front of the camera became even more vivid.
For anyone who cares about African culture, this is essential viewing. Sory's archive shows how Africans have always documented and celebrated themselves, on their own terms and in their own style. A million photographs is a huge body of work, and this show is a reminder of how much of it is still being discovered.
