SHIRLEY BAKER

80's FACES  

Shirley Baker (1932 – 2014) was a British photographer, best known for her street photography and street portraits in working class areas of Greater Manchester. She is one of Britain’s most compelling yet underexposed social documentary photographers. Her street photography of working-class inner-city areas, taken from 1960 until 2000, would come to define her humanist vision.

Born in Kersal, North Salford, she took up photography at the age of eight when she and her twin sister were given Brownie cameras by an uncle. As a child she developed her first black and white film in the darkness of the coal shed. Her passion for photography continued and she went on to study Pure Photography at Manchester College of Technology, and do advanced courses at London College of Printing. In her sixties she completed an MA in Critical History and Theory of Photography at the University of Derby.

She is said to be one of few women in post-war Britain to receive formal photographic training. Upon graduating, she started working as an industrial photographer for fabric manufacturers Courtaulds before working as freelance photographer for other businesses and as a writer and photographer on various magazines, books and newspapers, including The Guardian.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s she continuously photographed a range of humanist subjects, sparked by her amusement and curiosity of human character and behaviour, and a compassion for social injustice. However, it is her empathetic but unsentimental photographs of inner-city working-class communities in Salford and Manchester as they experienced years of ‘slum’ clearance that has come to define her distinct vision.

“I love the immediacy of unposed, spontaneous photographs and the ability of the camera to capture the serious, the funny, the sublime and the ridiculous. Despite the many wonderful pictures of the great and famous, I feel that less formal, quotidian images can often convey more of the life and spirit of the time”

It was not until 1986 that her photographs would come to wider public attention with the exhibition Here Yesterday, and Gone Today at Salford Art Gallery, a collection of photographs that make visible the spectrum of human resilience within the working class communities of Salford and Manchester. Since then, Baker has had two books of her photographs published and had her works exhibited widely, including at The Photographer’s Gallery, The Barbican, The Lowry Centre and Tate Britain (where her work is currently on display as part of the ‘Fear and Freedom’ exhibition).

Baker’s curiosity and engagement with the everyday world around her resulted in many different strands of work, many of which are yet to be exhibited, each of which confirms her acute observation, visual humour as well as compassion for the lives of ordinary people as distinctive in its exploration of post-war British culture.

Press

prints Available to purchase

  • Man sitting on bench holding tambourine – Manchester 1985
  • 2 punks one with blond hair – Stockport 1985
  • Girls in telephone box Stockport 1985
  • 2 punks one with green hair – Manchester 1985
  • 2 punks in black – Altrincham 1985
  • Punk Girls – Manchester 1985
  • Man with tattoos – Chester 1985
  • Punk with pink hair – Manchester 1985
  • Fuck Off – Manchester 1985
  • Punk rocker with spiky hair – Manchester 1985
  • 2 boys outside shop window – Stockport 1985
  • Punks Manchester 1985
  • Boy with pigeon on his hat – Trafalgar Square London 1986
  • Punk in Camden Market, London 1986
  • Smoking Lady, Manchester 1985
  • Tramp holding bottle on his head, Manchester 1985
  • Lady eating ice cream, Stockport 1985
  • Poppy seller, Stockport 1985
  • Man wearing medals, Stockport 1985
  • Guitarist – Manchester 1985
  • Pianist – Stockport 1985
  • Punks sitting in Trafalgar Square, London 1986
  • Donut seller, Stockport 1985
  • Saxophonist, Stockport 1985
  • Girl with curly hair, Manchester 1985
  • Motorcyclist, Chester 1985
  • Man sitting on bench, Stockport 1985
  • Hot dog seller, Manchester 1985
  • Pianist, Manchester 1985
  • Couple standing by black bus, Manchester 1985
  • Man wearing red shirt and pearls, Manchester 1985
  • Boy standing outside shop window – Stockport 1985
  • Man with spade Macclesfield, Cheshire 1985
  • Lady in Red check coat, Manchester 1985
  • Think Big, Stockport 1985
  • Men with arms crossed outside lingerie shop, Stockport 1985
  • Girl smoking in restaurant – Manchester 1985
  • Men selling burgers, Warrington 1985
  • Lady in car with dog, Cheshire, 1985
Ellie Davies, Seascape 7, 2020

90 cm x 120 cm, Edition 1/7
Prices starting at £1,200 exc VAT

Also available as:
90 cm x 120 cm, Edition 1/7
Prices starting at £1,200 exc VAT

Ellie Davies, Seascape 8, 2020

90 cm x 120 cm, Edition 1/7
Prices starting at £1,200 exc VAT

Also available as:
68 cm x 90 cm, Edition 1/7
Prices starting at £900 exc VAT

Ellie Davies, Seascape 9, 2020

90 cm x 120 cm, Edition 1/7
Prices starting at £1,200 exc VAT

Also available as:
68 cm x 90 cm, Edition 1/7
Prices starting at £900 exc VAT

 

Ellie Davies, Seascape 7, 2020

90 cm x 120 cm, Edition 1/7
Prices starting at £1,200 exc VAT

Also available as:
90 cm x 120 cm, Edition 1/7
Prices starting at £1,200 exc VAT

Ellie Davies, Seascape 8, 2020

90 cm x 120 cm, Edition 1/7
Prices starting at £1,200 exc VAT

Also available as:
68 cm x 90 cm, Edition 1/7
Prices starting at £900 exc VAT

Ellie Davies, Seascape 9, 2020

90 cm x 120 cm, Edition 1/7
Prices starting at £1,200 exc VAT

Also available as:
68 cm x 90 cm, Edition 1/7
Prices starting at £900 exc VAT