Shirley Baker & The Stockport Punks
with Nan Levy
Growing up in Greater Manchester, Shirley Baker was gifted a camera at a young age and went on to hold one with her for life. Her photographs capturing the working class everyday of Northern England were a rare insight into the country at a time when the focus was on the glamour of riches and female photographers struggled to get their work seen. Shirley photographed young punks in Stockport during the eighties, the photos capture both the vivid and creative nature of the DIY subculture as well as the fun and playfulness of days spent in town during our youth.
We spoke to Nan Levy, Shirley’s daughter, about her work and life as well as the current exhibition of at the Working Class Movement Library.
Interview by Esta Maffrett | 14.03.23
How did Shirley get into photography?
Shirley and her twin sister Barbara were both given a box Brownie camera by their uncle when they were about 8 or 10 years old. I think like most toys, after a short time, Barbara discarded hers but Shirley was never without it and the passion grew from there. Following that when she was at school it remained a hobby and she became the head of the photographic society at school. She developed her first rolls of film in the darkness of the coal shed in the garden and went on to study photography and printing at Manchester Polytechnic College. She even came to London a number of times to do various courses such as printing and medical photography.
At one point she worked in a children's hospital and she even took photographs in the operating theatre. Now everything’s recorded, then there was no such thing so they would have somebody with a camera taking pictures as a record.
Growing up in North Manchester, how did this shape her approach to photography?
She was born in Kersal which is between Prestwich and Salford, North Manchester, and when she was 2 they moved to Prestwich, so very close to Salford.
I think initially she tried a number of jobs in industry and didn’t particularly take to them. She worked for a big fabric manufacturer, she also tried teaching but what she really wanted to do was become a press photographer. But to be a press photographer, as I understand it, you needed to be a member of a union in order to fet a press card, and you can’t be a press photographer if you don’t have a press card and only men could join a union. Photography was very much a man's world and as a woman she couldn’t get a press card so she couldn’t officially work for a newspaper. So she sort of became a freelance photographer and she would enter competitions. She was a good writer as well so she used to take photographs and write an article to go with it and submit to various magazines and newspapers who would often publish her work. I’ve got boxes and boxes of publications with her work in. Somebody pointed out fairly recently that when they published her work in the early years they didn’t put her name against it. Whereas if they published a man's work they would say who it was photographed by. I saw someone publish this fact and couldn’t believe it so I went through the boxes to check and it was true.
In both her photography and her skill for writing you can see she has a real understanding of bringing out the stories in the photographs. What were the stories she was looking for?
She has said that the men, the approved photographers, will be busy photographing the rich and the famous. She preferred to photograph the more trivial aspects of life.
Photographing the everyday wasn’t fashionable then. Often the papers and magazines wouldn’t be interested in that because it just wasn’t the fashion of the time. Especially when she was photographing in the 60s the streets of Manchester and Salford where the demolition was taking place, some of the subjects would want to brush that under the carpet, they didn’t want anybody to see it. So it definitely wasn’t going to be published.
You’ve met and stayed in touch with many of the people in the photographs. What are their memories of being caught on film by Shirley Baker?
People contact me to have a copy of their picture because they have fond memories of the time. It’s always fun growing up and being a teenager so they remember that. Whether it’s punks of children that were in the streets, their memories aren’t the slum streets and deprived areas, they don’t see it like that. They remember their childhood as fun and exciting, being allowed to run around without restrictions and feel safe. That’s how they remember it and they want to see the photo again for the nostalgia.
There’s a good quote where she revisited the street years after all the demolition and she describes it as being like a stage set and all the actors have gone.
Tell us a bit about the exhibition at the Working Class Movement Library?
It’s in conjunction with the university and it’s part of a bigger project on architecture and
It focuses on the change to the built environment of Salford from Slum to Modern and how Shirley has captured that in her work. The exhibition spans the period from the 50s to the 70s. It’s part of a bigger architectural project relating to how housing has changed over the years and many times. Shirley photographed the demolition of the rows and rows of terrace houses before they were replaced with highrises but now they have demolished and been rebuilt again.
We’ve also made a documentary. A completely different project i’ve been working on with a production company, working to make a documentary of Shirley’s life and work soon to be released. It focuses mainly on what she’s best known for which is her 60s street photography but it goes through the years and includes Punk as well. Her Punks are a combination of London and Stockport because when me and my dad came to London for work she would spend time here and go around photographing.
How We Were was a 2020 exhibition hosted by the Museum of Youth Culture & curated by Debbie Sears in Central London, journeying through the streets of Manchester via the eyes of renowned documentary photographer, Shirley Baker.
In this video we discuss with Anna Douglas, the significance of Shirley Bakers work both in the present and how it may help us re-envision life in a post-pandemic world.
