(1932 - 2014)
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).