The Young and the Rebellious (Published 2014)

In the early 1990s, European and American curators and art dealers became aware of African photographs taken in the mid-20th century by the operators of small portrait studios, particularly in Mali. Discovering negatives that had been stored for decades, they went about printing, exhibiting and selling these works, making local photographers like Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé international art stars in the process.

What happened, however, is that the original nature of the photographs — the way they were made and later displayed — got a bit lost as they made their way into galleries and museums. Instead of the small, low-contrast prints their original clients would have commissioned and owned, the photos were shown as large, high-contrast prints, in keeping with the tastes and practices of the ’90s European and American art world. “Malick Sidibé: Chemises” at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., offers an opportunity to see some of these works in their near original state, with 50 small vintage prints being shown alongside 53 recent enlargements.

Mr. Sidibé, who was born in 1936, earned a diploma in jewelry making and then worked in a photography studio of a French colonial. In 1956 he bought his first camera, a Brownie Flash, and in 1957 became a full-time photographer, opening Studio Malick in 1962. In a video interview accompanying the show, Mr. Sidibé, who still lives in Bamako, Mali, describes how people came to his studio partly because it had electricity, which was a luxury there at that time.

What Mr. Sidibé is really known for, however, is his candid photographs of young people taken at parties from the 1960s to the early 1970s. Mali gained independence from France in 1960, and there was a flowering of music and culture. (Bamako has remained an international music center, although recent conflicts have upset that somewhat.) Taking advantage of the lighter 35-millimeter camera, Mr. Sidibé photographed people, attending surprise parties, celebrations for new babies or graduation parties at social clubs called “grins.”