The life and work of one of Greater Manchester's most loved photographers has been immortalised by a new documentary on her life and work.
Shirley Baker, born in Kersal, Salford, in 1932, is now celebrated as one of the most important social documentary photographers of her generation.
Shirley, who died in 2014 aged 82, is best known for her images of the streets and communities of Manchester and Salford from the 1960s to the 1980s.
During her lifetime she amassed a large and varied body of work, but it wasn't until later in her career that her photographs began to get the recognition they deserved.
Her daughter, Nan Levy, told the M.E.N: "She tried all sorts of jobs, she worked in industry, she tried teaching, she studied medical photography and worked in hospitals.
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"I think what she really wanted to be was a press photographer and she did lots of work for the [Manchester] Guardian as a freelancer. But she could never be an official press photographer because you needed to be a member of a union to get a press card, and you couldn't join a union as a woman in those days."
At the age of eight, Shirley and her identical twin sister were given a 'Brownie box' camera by an uncle. Shirley never put hers down.
After leaving school, she studied photography at Manchester College of Technology before going on to further formal studies in photography.
"I think that must have been quite unusual, because it was very much a man's world and very few women studied photography," said Nan.
"A lot of people have commented how lenient her parents must have been to allow her to do something like that. She wrote two books in her lifetime, and in one of her books she thanks her mum for allowing her to follow her dream."
Nan said that while it's great that her mum is getting the recognition she now deserves, it was not easy in those days for a woman to build a career as a photographer.
"Her ideal job would have been working at the Manchester Guardian," she said. "She knew people at the Guardian and they often used her pictures and she kept everything - every rejection letter, she kept every newspaper cutting."
And it was while trawling through these boxes of newspaper cuttings of her mum's work, one thing stood out to Nan. "Somebody wrote that when they published her work they never put her name against it," Nan said.
"They did publish her work in newspapers because she was always writing articles and sending them in with her photographs. I went through the box [of newspaper cuttings] and sure enough, when they published [a man's] work they wrote his name against the photograph, and when they published mum's they just put a description."
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The famous street photographs Shirley took in Manchester and Salford in the 1960s often documented close communities who faced being upended by the post-war inner city 'slum clearance' programme. She excelled in capturing the humanity and humour of those communities.
"A lot of people have said that you can see the people in the photographs look comfortable," Nan said. "Whereas sometimes, when you look at the photographs of some of the well-known male photographers, it's sort of less so, and sometimes the pictures can be quite mocking of the people. I wonder whether that's because she was a woman?
"Certainly with the street photographs in the '60s, it would have been councillors and people from authorities that were organising the demolition programme. And so people felt a bit nervous, whereas a woman [taking photographs] was perhaps less frightening."
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To celebrate Shirley Baker's photography, a new documentary has just been released on her life and work called Shirley Baker: Life Through A lens, directed and edited by Jason Figgis.
Actor and writer, John West, who created the documentary told the M.E.N: "Shirley was one of the greatest photographers of post-war Britain and captured on camera a crucial period in Manchester's history in the 1960s, a time when working-class communities were being uprooted and forced out of their homes into soulless tower blocks. Shirley's photographs will ensure that those communities and what they experienced will never be forgotten."
Click below to view a gallery of Shirley Baker's photographs from the new limited edition collection
A screening of Shirley Baker: Life Through A Lens will take place at 1.30pm at Manchester Art Gallery, on June, 4. The documentary coincides with the release of a new limited edition box set of the photographer's work now available at Café Royal books, and can be purchased on their website by clicking here.
The box set is a collection of six books of the photographer's work, including early colour images of Hulme in 1965, Manchester and Salford Children in the 1960s, as well as her work documenting the punk scene in the 1980s.
Nan added: "I hope to get her more recognition and give people the opportunity, who possibly can't get to a big city to see an exhibition, to be able to view her work."
More of Shirley Baker's work can be viewed on the shirleybakerphotography.com website.
Did Shirley Baker's photographs in our gallery awaken any memories for you? Let us know in the comments section below.
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