Little girl by the swings

Location

Country: UK
City: England
Place: Manchester, DCMS Hub

One of the few women in post-war Britain to receive formal training in photography, Shirley Baker photographed a wide range of subjects. She took on various commissions and worked for the Manchester Guardian. She developed a particular interest in the street life of the inner cities of Northern Britain in the post war era, a time that saw many social changes.
In these photographs most of which were taken in the 1960s we are drawn back to a time when children could claim their neighbourhood streets for play. Baker captures scenes and people with empathy, showing many of these children, from working-class backgrounds and diverse heritages, clearly engrossed and fully engaged in the physicality of playing on the streets with friends. Baker’s eye for narrative drama comes across in Salford as children play somewhat precariously on a steep stairway, or in Manchester where two boys stretch themselves between a road and a kerb, to peer into a drain. Through these evocative images of children at play we gain a snapshot and an insight into the realities of a society in time and place. In the photograph, titled Hulme, we see a woman walking past the doors of two houses – leaving us with both an idea of past grandeur in their architecture and the present-day grime of the condition they are presented to us in. Some of these photographs of children playing might seem like historic documents to one generation yet strikingly familiar to another. We are left not just with a view into society in the North of England at a particular time but also with lingering thoughts about our own experiences of childhood.

Shirley Baker was born in Kersal, Salford and became interested in photography at an early age, developing her first black and white film in the darkness of a coal shed. She studied Pure Photography at Manchester College of Technology and received an MA in Critical History and Theory of Photography at the University of Derby in the 1960s. She went on to take up photography commissions including for Viewpoint Photography Gallery at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital; and for the Documentary Photography Archive at Manchester Airport. Her work featured in publications including the Manchester Guardian, Amateur Photographer, Cheshire Life and The Lady. Being one of a few women in the 1960s and 1970s in what was a largely male-dominated field at the time, presented its challenges and it was only in the later years of her life and posthumously, that her work received wider critical acclaim. It was presented in a number of photo books and exhibited at gallery exhibitions including at the opening of the Lowry Centre, Manchester (2000); at the Djanogly, Gallery, Nottingham (2013); Photographers Gallery, London (2015); Manchester Art Gallery; Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool; Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool; Somerset House, London (all 2017) and the Barbican Gallery, London (2022).

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

photograph (as object name), silver gelatin print, black & white photograph

Artist

Shirley Baker (1932 - 2014)

Title

Little girl by the swings

Date

1972

Medium

gelatin silver print

Dimensions

height: 28.8 cm; width: 24.1 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from James Hyman Gallery, March 2022

Provenance

James Hyman Photography; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 31 March 2022

GAC number

19085