Seydou Keita legacy disputed - Front Page

Legal controversy has erupted over the estate of revered Malian portrait photographer Seydou Keita (1921-2001). At stake are 921 negatives-including many of Keita's best known and most critically esteemed images-now in the hands of French specialist in African art Andre Magnin. Magnin is currently curator of the Contemporary African Art Collection in Geneva, founded by Jean Pigozzi, an heir to the Simca automotive fortune. The Seydou Keita Association, a family trust located in Bamako, Mall, is demanding return of the negatives on the grounds of a contract, signed by the artist nine months before his death, that names Parisian dealer Jean-Marc Petras as the exclusive worldwide agent for Keita's work. As reported by Le Monde, the seemingly open-and-shut case is complicated by the history of the Magnin-Keita relationship, involving conventions of business practice in the art world and in Africa.

Keita began working independently in 1948 in a tiny studio across from a prison, making sharp-focus black-and-white studies of Bamako residents in their finery. Although he served as a state photographer in Mall from 1963 to 1977, his classic images--often with astonishing pattern-on-pattern juxtapositions--were little known in the international art community until 1991, when French photographer Francoise Huguier introduced them into exhibitions in France and the U.S. The following year, Magnin made his selection from the approximately 7,000 negatives kept in a metal trunk in Bamako (where the bulk remain to this day). Some 1,300 high-quality prints were produced abroad and sent to Keita for signing. (The portraitist had previously given sitters small, locally printed images on non-archival stock.) Examples displayed in over 50 international institutions made Keita the first black African photographer thus exhibited--globally famous. Sales were handled primarily through Paris's Galerie du Jour, owned by fashion designer Agnes b., and Gagosian Gallery in New York. Pigozzi, who has long operated in tandem with Magnin, bought early, securing around 500 images for $150,000; other major purchasers included the Cartier Foundation and the French ministry of culture.

The works rose steadily in value. Agnes b. candidly detailed to Le Monde buying 164 signed prints for $114,000 and selling 65 of them for $53,000. According to Magnin, who claims to have been an unpaid facilitator of the commercial transactions, Keita received more than $697,000 for a total of about 1,000 prints sold over nine years. (The photographer, says Keita's son Oumar, invested at least $349,000 in property in Bamako during the period.)

The photo sales were carried out without benefit of written accords because, Magnin maintains, it is customary in Africa to operate on verbal agreements: he had, in effect, a "moral contract" with the photographer, an arrangement not unknown in the West. Oumar Keita states that the relationship went sour when Magnin urged the ailing artist to confide his life's work to the curator's care so as to avoid future problems among his heirs. Keita, who had three wives and 29 children, took offense at the suggestion of potential discord in his family over money.

Meanwhile, Patras was winning the confidence of key family members and the photographer himself. In February 2001, the exclusivity contract was signed, and Keita sent a letter to Magnin formally requesting return of his negatives. While Magnin ignored the directive, Patras chose 200 of the negatives remaining in Bamako and began selling prints for $2,300 apiece. (His contract, the result of a two-week negotiation, gave Keita a $1,800 signing bonus and 25 percent of sales.)

The Seydou Keita Association, headed by president Alioune Ba (a Bamako photographer and curator) and vice president Kader Keita (Seydou's brother), was inaugurated in October 2001. Keita died in November 2001, just two weeks before the opening of a show of his works at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York [see A.i.A., June '02], named by the photographer in July 2001 as his primary dealer in the Americas. The exhibition garnered about $150,000 in sales of limited edition, estate-stamped prints.

In January 2002 a French tribunal refused to rule on the Magnin-Petras dispute, because two of Keita's 15 surviving children stated in writing that they had secured return of the negatives. They later disavowed this statement and joined with their siblings in a unanimous petition of Magnin, who avers that the negatives are in safekeeping at an undisclosed location. Petras, citing the high cost of a long legal process, has not yet taken further action in court. He complains that Pigozzi has unfairly portrayed him as a deathbed interloper, thus inhibiting development of his curatorial and business projects. Petras points out that, as a result of his notarized contract, the Kefta family has received $81,000 in 21 months.

This past fall, the controversy spilled over into dueling shows at the multinational event called African Photography Encounters: "Rites, Sacred and Profane," the fifth African photography biennial held in Bamako [Oct. 20-Nov. 20, 2003]. Ten exquisite signed images credited to "CAAC--The Pigozzi Collection," all of them drawn from Keita's premier 1950s period and accompanied by a catalogue essay by Magnin, were on view in a group installation at the Musee National du Mall. Simultaneously, a chronologically broader exhibition, including many small vintage prints and some late works of lesser (though still high) quality, was held at the outlying Seydou Keita Association facility. Foreign visitors were leafleted in their hotels with an Association screed against Magnin and Pigozzi that also solicited cooperation in publicizing the "scandal." At the opening, Togo artist Djonoda Akpeheu G. enacted a silent mourning performance while kneeling amid the equipment formerly used by Keita.

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