Me and my wife were returning from two months in the northern desert -at the frontier between Mali and Algeria- where we had been teaching French to tuareg children. Back in the capital we decided to find legendary photographer Seydou Keita before flying back home. We found him in the courtyard of his home, finishing his lunch in the company of one of his sons. We spent the better part of the afternoon listening to tales of his life, and career in photography. At some point he took us to a small closet-like room on the edge of the courtyard, where he pointed to a metal canteen below some random junk and said "here are some of my older negatives, feel free to look at them while i go to the mosque", and i dove head first in this pile of 4x5 black and white negatives which showed his first early works as photographer. I dove in this treasure trove, unsure if those images had ever been seen by others than the original subjects, and unsure if they would ever be shared to a wider public.
His "success" in western terms was only a couple of years old, and he appeared still a bit surprised by the whole thing. Three years later he was no longer there.