Shirley Baker

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Shirley Baker (born in Kersal, North Salford) is an English photographer.

[edit] Biography

Baker moved to Manchester at the age of two. She studied Pure Photography at Manchester College of Technology, later taking other courses at London Regent Street Polytechnic and London College of Printing. She has done both industrial photography and freelance writing and photography for various magazines, books and newspapers, and has lectured at Salford College of Art and Manchester Polytechnic.

Baker's photography shows scenes with a strong sense of community spirit and a feeling of Northern nostalgia. She began taking photographs in the early sixties with a desire to capture the street life, but this soon turned into almost a compulsion to record “the face of a people at a time when their homes were being demolished and they were being uprooted due to a huge 'slum' clearance programme.”

Thus the adults of the community express good nature, but carry the burden of a time of immense change. The younger generation, however, are oblivious. Shirley Baker wrote: “The children saw things differently, for to them it was a giant playground with untold treasure hidden amongst the junk and rubble.”