Where I grew up, no one needed ID photos. Older relatives lived and died without them. It was another time. ID pictures were necessary only when you moved to a city; you had to register with the colonial authorities. That’s how I was first photographed, for an ID card that cost 200 francs for four pictures, in 1957. That was at Photo Luxe studio, owned by Grégoire Yaméogo in Ouagadougou, capital of what was then called Haute-Volta, a French colony. That sum was a lot of money back then. The moment I paid for those IDs, I thought it was a good-paying job and that I could possibly make a career of it. I wanted to be a photographer. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have become one.

We had been living in a rural environment and then, after independence, it was a boom time. There was a total sense of freedom and most people looked down on the colonial past. They wanted to be themselves. Hopes were high and dreams were ripe. I was in the right place at the right time to see how countryside traditions mingled with modem city life. People were eager for change and I saw it all through my lens.

I think colour photography has somehow displaced black-and-white. I gave up black-and-white photography for good in the late 1990s. I still walk almost every day around Bobo's central market, taking digital pictures of my old customers. Everything I did in my career came together once I realised I could live well from my work. When I started exhibiting and selling pictures in places like London, Chicago, Bordeaux, New York, Amsterdam, Cape Town, Oslo, Toulouse, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Geneva and Dakar, all those decades of hard work suddenly made sense. 

My pictures showcase an era, a city and the good people of Bobo-Dioulasso, who were the stars of their own existence. They illustrate the meeting between tradition and modernity, between country and city life, colonisation and independence, past and future – as an immediate present.