Salford Museum & Art Gallery presents a retrospective of the work of documentary photographer Shirley Baker, made from the 1960s to 2000s.

Shirley Baker was born in Salford. She studied Pure Photography at Manchester College of Technology and went on to study in London and the University of Derby. She has worked as an industrial photographer, and as a freelance writer and photographer for various magazines, books and newspapers. She has also had numerous commissions and exhibitions, and has had 2 books published.

Shirley Baker’s photography shows contrasting themes, varying from the everyday street life of Salford and Manchester, and scenes of faraway places including America and Japan, to the frivolity of the Riviera in the South of France. However they share a commonality of humour, social history and the innocence of youth.

Some of the photographs in the exhibition are about social change and look at the human story of the great upheaval in Salford and Manchester in the 1960’s caused by the largest programme for the clearance and redevelopment of old, sub-standard housing in Europe. Shirley Baker returned in 2000 to follow up the story.

Photographs of the Thatcher era in London, show the exuberance of metropolitan life as well as the fallout from a time when, in Shirley’s words:

“Institutions were being closed down and the under-privileged, the sad and the mad were squatting, begging and lying in the streets”.

Shirley last exhibited at Salford Museum and Art Gallery in 1986 and has since then exhibited at Cornerhouse, the Photographers Gallery, London, The Lowry and the Tate Gallery London.