Lou Stoppard: Shirley Baker's Photographic Eye

Join writer, editor and curator Lou Stoppard as she talks about the life and work of Shirley Baker, whose photographs document the rapid economic and social change of the 1950s onwards with a uniquely compassionate and humorous eye, spanning the UK, France, Japan, the US, and beyond. In partnership with Village Books.

Thursday 23 April 2020
19:00 BST, London
14:00 EDT, New York

Running time: approx 25 mins 

 
About Shirley Baker

Shirley Baker developed her first photograph as a young girl ‘from the darkness of the coal shed’ in her hometown of Salford, Northwest England. From this moment, she developed a lifelong interest in documentary photography, amounting to a vast and celebrated archival collection that spans the length of her career, dating from the 1950s until 2000. Edited by Lou Stoppard, this book presents an extensive–and, uniquely, female–depiction of post-war life; an eccentric survey which combines her better-known street photographs of Manchester, Salford and Blackpool with previously unseen photographs that span the UK, all the way to the South of France, Italy and Japan. Instances of humour abound in the collection, casting a spotlight on the idiosyncrasies of British identity: a high street shopper cocks his head echoing the mannequin behind him, an older woman with cigarette-wrinkled lips looks into the lens with an almost comic stoicism, children play, mimicking adults. The changing landscapes, fashions, photographic styles and tones that make up the sequence are woven together by Baker’s singular attentiveness to moments of wit and warmth in daily life.

To order copies of the book visit here