The world just cannot get enough of Shirley Baker, as her stunning photographs have an enduring quality that seems to get more enduring by the day…
The 2017 exhibition of photos at Manchester Art Gallery, Women and Children; and Loitering Men, was a massive success, with the third edition of the accompanying book selling out, repeating similar acclaim at the London Photographers’ Gallery. Previously, when the exhibition was shown in Madrid, there were no books left, despite it being shortlisted for a prestigious prize…
“That was really nice, brilliant” Shirley’s daughter, Nan Levy, told the Salford Star in 2018 “Mum did all sorts of things in her lifetime that people aren’t aware of. When I was young, she got half a dozen pictures in the Louvre in Paris. And I remember her and dad asking me to take them to the Tate in London. When I asked why, she said ‘Well I’ve got one or two pictures in there’…
“Once I was working in Paris and she called me and said ‘I know you’re really busy darling but you’re working in the Champs Elysees and I’ve got a few pictures in an exhibition not far from you; I understand if you don’t have time’…It was amazing, she was being exhibited along with all these top New York photographers” Nan recalled “It was an exhibition on women and there were all these glamorous Vogue models and famous women of the time…and my mother’s old wrinkly women scrubbing t’step, alongside all these nudes.”
While being exhibited nationally and internationally in her lifetime, before all the new acclaim, Shirley passed away and Nan is now dealing with the phenomenal legacy of her mother’s work…
For the book Without Trace: Manchester and Salford in the 1960s, Nan selected her favourite images and wrote a comprehensive Intro about the social conditions that were the background to the photos at the time and quoted her mum…
“Often when I came to a cleared site it was like standing on an empty stage; the actors had gone and there was nothing to show who they were or what the play had been about. Memories linger, but without some hint or trace of reality, they too die out and come to nothing. Perhaps these photographs will give substance to some of those memories…”
At the Manchester Art Gallery show in 2017, Nan met some of the original kids who featured in the photos…”I was talking to the sisters from one of the pictures and they didn’t like the fact that people were calling it the ‘slum streets’. They never saw themselves as living in the slums. They said ‘We loved our childhood, we were out all day playing in the summer holidays, we had a dress for best, there was always food on the table and we lived with lots of love in our family’.”
So when she was the same age as the kids in the photos, was the daughter aware of her mother hitting the grimy areas and poor communities on the other side of town?
“No, I wasn’t even aware where she had gone” Nan recalled “I was very, very young when she was ‘compelled to go back to the streets’ as she said. When my mum died, my dad wanted to put the house on the market so I had to work hard to archive and move the work, and that’s when I got to know it better and her favourites.
“When people have asked for exhibitions, I’ve had to rummage through them all and when you see the same prints coming up a few times you think ‘She really liked this one because she’s done a few versions of it‘” Nan added “It’s been really interesting.”
Shirley Baker never really made it known that she was from Kersal in Salford...”I don’t think I even knew until I started researching, because she always said she was born near Prestwich” said Nan “I grew up in Wilmslow and I never really got to know north Manchester very well. Even my grandparents had moved to Sale, so when I was born they lived in South Manchester. My job took me to London and I said I’d do it for a year but now, thirty years later, I’m still here.”
But now, through the photos, that link with Salford and Manchester is indelible, as her mum’s photos continue to excite generations old and new…
“It’s such a shame that she’s not here to see it” Nan lamented “You work so hard to get your first photographs published and I do nothing, just answer the phone and people say ‘Oh, can we do a book?…‘”
For lots more details on Shirley Baker, her life and photos see the Shirley Baker website – click here
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