Seydou Keita was born in 1923 in Bamako, Mali. His work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum for African Art and the Center for African Art in New York, among others. Keita lives in Bamako.

Seydou Keita's works capture young people coming of age amidst social change. Keita started his career with portraits of family members, going on to take and carefully preserve thousands of his photographs, which are now seen as a valuable source of information about life in Mali.