Autoportrait au Miroir

Six years into having launched his career as a photographer, Sanlé Sory stood before a mirror with his Rolleiflex twin-lens medium-format camera. In recent interviews he has explained that his portrait studio “fulfilled people’s fantasies, ” with fun being “central to his work.” As Sory poses in this self-portrait, we gain a sense of the playfulness he wished to create at Volta Foto, his studio in the capital city Bobo-Dioulasso, and as he traveled throughout the Republic of Upper Volta (which became Burkina Faso in 1984).