From 1948 until approximately 1964, Keïta took pictures of hundreds of people in his Bamako studio, creating an original style of representation that helped shape the new “Bamakois” identity of his customers. Coined by scholar Manthia Diawara in the 1990s, the term “Bamakois” signifies a citizen in mid-century Bamako who was familiar with the modern goods, technologies, and conventions that were emerging in the city as it transitioned from a rural village to a French colonial urban hub to an independent capital during the 1940s and 50s. In this studio, Keïta had an assortment of patterned backdrops and a variety of Western props including handbags, telephones, fountain pens, and a Vespa, which his clients posed to signify their modernity and progressive status in the community.

Juxtaposing richly patterned West African textiles with modern accessories like a men’s wristwatch and the radio, Keïta developed a sophisticated aesthetic that fused African tradition with the new urban sensibility. His method captured the spirit, sophistication, social status, and cosmopolitanism of his clients with crisp eloquence. For the rising middle and upper classes of Bamako, Keïta’s studio became a kind of theatrical stage upon which their Bamakois identity was constructed. When sitters were photographed in Keïta’s studio, they both participated in and represented their active involvement in Bamako’s modernization.

In the late 1980s and early 90s, artists, critics, and art historians began an intensely focused, post-colonial examination of race, ethnicity, and art. Keita’s works revealed an African aesthetic that seemed unlikely to many European and American observers. Not only did his photographs suggest a rich and advanced chronology of African photography (a tradition that had not even been acknowledged in the West), but it rivaled stylistically the work of accomplished mid-twentieth century Western photographers like Hans Namuth, Diane Arbus, and Irving Penn.

Exhibition of Keïta’s work at contemporary art museums like MOCA Cleveland initiates an important dialogue about how objects become art in Western society, a discussion that often centers on the uncertain relationship between creative intention and artistic meaning. Although he wanted his photographs to look as beautiful as possible, Keïta neither considered himself an artist, nor did he self-consciously produce his work as art. However, the aesthetic quality of the photographs he produced is undeniable. As such, his work has been re-presented as “fine art” through gallery exhibitions, audience reception, and critical analyses. In each of these spheres, the striking beauty, dignified aesthetic, and subtle, underlying narratives of Keïta’s work have remained enduringly compelling for audiences across the globe.