Golden Age 1960s–1980s - Shirley Baker

Golden Age 1960s–1980s - Shirley Baker - Café Royal Books

Documentary photography of Manchester and Salford from the 1960s to the 1980s (the golden age). 

"Shirley Baker (1932 – 2014) was one of Britain’s most compelling yet underexposed social documentary photographers. Her street photography of the working-class inner-city areas, taken from 1960 until 1981, would come to define her humanist vision. Shirley’s curiosity and engagement with the everyday world around her resulted in many different strands of work, many of which are yet to be exhibited, each of which confirms her acute observation, visual humour as well as compassion for the lives of ordinary people as distinctive in its exploration of post-war British culture.

“It has always astonished me how quickly things can disappear without a trace”

Shirley Baker was born in Kersal, North Salford. Her father had a family furniture manufacturing business in Salford. She took up photography at the age of eight when she and her twin sister were given Brownie cameras by an uncle. As a child she developed her first black and white film in the darkness of the coal shed. Her passion for photography continues and she went on to study Pure Photography at Manchester College of Technology. She later went on to do courses at London Regent Street Polytechnic and London College of Printing."

• 32 pages
• printed in the UK
• staple bound
• 14cm x 20cm

About Café Royal Books:

"Café Royal Books is the idea of Craig Atkinson, an artist and lecturer. Our first title was published in 2005.

Craig wanted to create a way to make artwork accessible to a wider audience. The solution needed to be small, functional, open to collaboration, affordable, and work independently of galleries. These ideas remain at the heart of what we do.

We’re a small family-run publisher based in England, next to the woodland, dunes, and windswept beaches of the North West coast — we’re always inspired by the vastness, calm and energy of this environment. 

We make weekly publications, focussing on documentary photography linked to Britain and Ireland, printed and bound locally by a small 170 year old printing company. Libraries and museums around the world collect the books, so the work will remain preserved and accessible for many years. Our books don’t need batteries, or screens. We hope they will be used, create conversation and be passed down through family generations."

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