Konaté (b. Bamako, 1959) began photographing on December 24, 1988, at 4:00 p.m., with a Zenit camera his younger brother brought back from Moscow. His first photographs were family snapshots that he made out of curiosity and for his own pleasure. When he also began to do photographs for others he decide to go into photography as a profession. He settled down to recording marriages, baptismal ceremonies and political events. In his artistic work Konaté photographs details of bodies and objects: scars on a forehead, a child's mouth, the averted pupil of an eye, the end of a bone, a silver signet ring. He makes use of lighting effects to emphasize the texture of his subjects. Form and colour begin to lead a life of their own. From the moment that he began to turn his camera on details of objects, people thought he was crazy. Konaté is owner of Studio Kela Phox in Bamako.