VANISHING POINT : SHIRLEY BAKER’S PHOTOGRAPHIC ODYSSEY OF 1960’S MANCHESTER AND SALFORD.
Copyright ⓒ Shirley Baker
There is a strong sense of transience at the heart of Shirley Baker’s work on the streets of Manchester and Salford in the 1960’s. Her street photography of these working class communities is full of ghosts trapped within the frames of her images. Fleeting spectres that will now haunt this rubbish-strewn inner city slum forever, thanks to Baker’s book : Without A Trace.
Shot in the 1960’s on the rundown streets of Manchester and Salford, she produces thought-provoking and challenging photographs. Her work fascinates from first photograph to the last, and Baker, herself, is invisible as she moves quietly among her subjects and creates these street photographs from the harsh reality of this grim backdrop.
She is, of course, not totally invisible, there are photographs of her on pages 12 and 128, and she is, of course, the person who made the photographs and brought the project to life.
Copyright ⓒ Shirley Baker
“It has always astonished me how quickly things can disappear without a trace,” she is quoted as saying on her website, and her book – with an excellent introduction by her daughter Nan Levy – echoes that sentiment.
These are people about to be decanted and moved out of their homes. Communities which prove as transient as the people who once lived there. Things really can ‘disappear without a trace.’
These photographs, however, give this episode in the life of Manchester and Salford a visual permanence. Tender, young faces stare out from frozen time, ephemeral urchins playing games on a distant 1960’s wasteland. Children, absorbed in what they are doing on the bleak streets of the northern city, their harsh existence on this unforgiving terrain momentarily forgotten in the rush and tear of their play.
Baker’s book is a wonderful photographic meditation on the transient nature of the people who populated such communities and their vanishing territory. A shift of the urban community, moved and controlled by bureaucracy and faceless authority, to another part of the city. No pets were allowed to move with the families to new council accommodation. Cats and dogs, at the mercy of the crass insensitivities of power, were subsequently abandoned and left to eternally wander the wasteland in search of their long departed owners.
But, Baker gives those who would never be heard a visual voice, albeit in a snapshot of time. The dispossessed call out from these photographs, as they carve out a slim, meagre existence in the underbelly of Manchester society. Children play amongst the rubble, detritus and junked cars of the local streets while adults seem downtrodden and careworn.
This is a powerful reminder of what was. This, make no doubt about it, is a historical, socio-economic and cultural document of some significance. A mirror held up to a vanishing landscape and people few cared about, and a culture of relative innocence long since gone with the passing of time.
It is remarkable how freely and unattended these children (of differing ages) are allowed to play among the scrapped automobiles and discarded garbage of these rundown and condemned streets.
Today, a photographer following children around and taking shots of them would be immediately be reported to the police. If Shirley Baker, or any adult photographer for that matter, had been seen stalking kids as they played in the street and taking photographs of them today, countless mobile phone calls would have been made within minutes to alert the authorities.
In the contemporary climate communities might send out their own vigilantes to question and, perhaps, even take retribution on such innocent photographers. Undeniably, this is how much our cultural norms have changed in 50 plus years? The innocence and brilliance of this very social, street photographer would have been lost with such restrictions. To protect our children we are now invested with a widespread cultural paranoia about such activities.
The irony is seen visually in Baker’s photographs. Who cannot see the trusting vulnerability in the eyes of these children? Her style is candid but it is known that the children she shot often posed in their own way for her.
Her genius was to thrust us into the middle of these impoverished communities and to make us think. We cannot help but wonder about these children? Who were they and what befell them as they were taken out of their homes and communities and decanted and dispersed to other parts of the city?
The young lads playing football in front of graffiti declaring ‘City’, ‘champs’ an obvious reference to Manchester City which is dated 1966 – prophetic because Manchester City would indeed win the title in 1968, p19. Or the little girl pushing the chassis of what was once a pram across the wasteland of her playground p26, or another little girl who also pushes a pram wearing, what looks like, her father’s shoes p24 and p25? Children playing on the street is a central theme to this work p122.
Copyright ⓒ Shirley Baker
Copyright ⓒ Shirley Baker
Copyright ⓒ Shirley Baker
They chalk the pavements, play cricket, and two little boys pull up a drain and look down into the depths of a sewer as their curious terrier dog watches over their shoulders, p33.
These are street photographs morphed into a wonderful documentary series, and it doesn’t matter because while each image could easily stand alone in their own right, combined they make an epic book. Most of the pictures, appropriately, are in black and white though there are a group of shots from Shirley’s flirtation with colour in 1965 between pages 69 and 90.
My own favourite is a magnificently crafted winter scene on p52. A little boy in the foreground of the photograph stands in a ‘ginnel’ bookended by snow covered houses on either side. It has a special charm. That little boy is me, is you, is all of us enchanted by snowfall – he just has to be out in it. As he looks out we think : ‘Who is he? Whatever became of him?’
Copyright ⓒ Shirley Baker
Despite her obvious talent it would be the mid 1980’s before Shirley Baker began to receive the attention she so undoubtedly deserved, 20 years after these beautifully made photographs were taken.
Shirley Baker is an important street photographer, a significant documentary photographer, a clever and sharp recorder of transience, and history, and socio-economic reality. She offers a collection that is poignant, beautiful and powerful, a whole mix of competing emotions from happy children to downtrodden fathers and careworn mothers (not to mention soon to be discarded and lost pets).
It zings and sizzles with the electricity of a timeless visual sociology, that has its footprint in the 1960’s but will always resonate in any contemporary photographic era.
The Brilliant & Beautiful Without A Trace, Published By History Press can be purchased here
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