ABSTRACT
This chapter considers both photographs of Sidibe and testimonies of former ambianceurs. The photographs taken by Malick Sidibe during the sixties allow an understanding of this new youth culture. Sidibe's oeuvre is a reflection of a golden age of Malian photography, which, in his words, aimed to "embellish life." Gender norms were shaken by a claim of autonomy and a quest for individuality. As one study has argued, colonial schools introduced "new models of male and female identity," which were adopted by the literate elites. But it was foremost the national liberation that spurred the liberation of bodies in Mali's urban space. The bodies of the young men are also stripped and eroticized: open shirts, torsos offered for all to see, tight pants emphasizing the arch of their buttocks—these slender men's bodies, almost androgynous, defy traditional representations of virility. The body disciplined by work was the regime's ideal.
