Is a great subject all that it takes to make a great portrait?  That’s what I wonder after seeing the Malick Sidibe show at Jack Shanmain, which closes today.  The exhibit ranges from small formal portraits to larger, documentary photographs by the celebrated Malian photographer.  The real stunners are the studio portraits of young men and women.  They’re not to commemorate any special occasion but simply to record how fabulous their subjects look, and boy do they look fabulous.  The woman wear crazily patterned robes and cat-eye glasses, and the men wear bell-bottom trousers and panama hats trimmed with feathers.  Sidibe was in the right place (Bamako) at the right time (the 1960’s and 1970’s) to capture this perfect storm of style.

More than any fashion photographer Sidibe reminds me of Nan Goldin, who photographed her clique of hard-living artist friends in New York through the 1980’s.  I don’t think we’re attracted to qualities of these photographs, but to the people inside them, to their style and their spirit, and to the small, brilliant world that they’ve constructed for themselves. (Although Sidibe’s world, full of dancing and music, seems much more fun that Goldin’s, full of bruises and trackmarks.)  Sidibe’s work was appropriated, unsurprisingly, by Janet Jackson in the 1997 video for “Got ‘Til It’s Gone."  The images are easy, Afro-centric, and immensely fashionable.  But there’s something else at work in Sidibe’s portraits too.  These are photographs of people who look great and have the untroubled self-confidence know that they do.