Shirley Baker’s Half Century of Street Photography | The New Yorker

In Shirley Baker’s photographs, men are caught gesturing, or mid-stride. Women slip past or sit, reflecting; sometimes they are close together, conversing, conspiring. Children play, occasionally surveying the camera with a look somewhere between innocence and wisdom. Older people look into the lens with an almost comic stoicism, their years and routines readable on their faces: cigarette-wrinkled lips; helmet-like hair that, through years of repetition, has grown into a distorted, heightened version of what it once was. In some images, people are staring, not always at Baker but at some unfurling scene—parents look at their children, beachgoers survey other holidaymakers, shoppers regard new wares.