Intimate relationships with Shirley Baker’s photos of Manchester and Salford: the mnemonic potential of documentary photos

Abstract

Reflecting on a photo-elicitation project linked to a major exhibition of Shirley Baker’s photos of Manchester and Salford in the 1960s and 1970s, this paper explores relationships between people and the photos that purportedly represent the communities of their childhoods. It addresses neglected questions about how documentary photos contribute to the construction of memory and about how personal memories might animate found photos. The article proposes that it is useful to describe relationships between people and photos using terminology that characterises connections between people. ‘Intimate’ relationships are the focus of this discussion; these occur when people have a personal connection, and feel close, to a photo. Intimate relationships were forged with Baker’s photos in part because of their mnemonic power. Their utility as memory materials was not simply that they prompted remembering, including re-enactment of belonging in place, but that they did important work for participants by facilitating the composition of narratives about the self, past and present. Baker’s photography collection is one of several, typically underused photographic sources in local archives, representing everyday life in post#-war Britain. Understanding how people relate to documentary photos that purportedly represent their lives, enables more effective use of found photos as sources in academic and community history contexts.