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Personal Themes

23 galleries

A collection of personal photography driven by topical or aesthetic themes, by Richard Baker.

They are inspired by the incongruous, quirkier moments of modern life but are helped along by an increasing interest in landscape.

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  • Street Pictures (large edit)
    Street Pictures (large edit)
    535 images
    In this gallery of thematic coincidences and repetitions one follows carefully edited sequences of street incidents that use colour, circumstance and form as threads. They originate from the early 90s to the present and include the workman; dogs; faces; mannequins; backdrops; seasides; spillages. Returning from aviation projects (Red Arrows, 2005) I have been drawn again into public places, spurred on after reports of farcical incidents when tourists were suspected of terrorist surveillance. It's hugely exciting (and overwhelming) to venture from home and take street pictures. But while it is an exercise of unconstrained, spontaneous possibilities there can be no better examples of wasted days when walking pavements yields nothing but sore feet. People and landscapes are fickle and it's also easy to become paranoid at what one might miss simply by looking say, a few degrees to the left, mere feet from where the most magical moment has occurred. While I prefer to seek the overly complex and complicated I tend to find the minimal and simple; the poignant and quietly incongruous. This isn't so much an annoyance as a surprise to me that I come home with twos and threes of people and objects rather than multiples. Outs become stock, laden with suggestive conceptual keywords: Worry; nerves; suspicion; tension; romance and oddity. I would urge the viewer to see this gallery as a slideshow in full-screen mode and to watch until the end, where many of my favourite pictures have been deliberately placed. And if you care to help me edit this work, I will willingly send you an invite to rate the images within a lightbox. A small edit of the Top 30 is here: http://bit.ly/13sLIMX
  • The Things They Carried: The A-B of Items on the Move
    The Things They Carried: The A-B of...
    106 images
    One psalm in my Street Photography mission, is the everyday purpose of transporting objects of retail, for construction and because of waste. It is an opportunist theme that I inadvertently keep responding to, accidentally seeing even more diverse items and possessions that need moving around. The A-B of items on the move is constant. Historically, these things are being carried by workers and couriers, shoppers, commuters, and businessmen - the professions of centuries. The one aspect I can influence is their sequencing, an ordering of their shapes and coincidences.
  • Feet On Seats
    Feet On Seats
    12 images
    "Would you do this at home?" "What would your mother say?"
  • On Steps
    On Steps
    31 images
    Steps and Stairs, by Richard Baker.
  • Works
    Works
    86 images
    Works, by Richard Baker. An ongoing theme (started in May 2010) about the incongruity of roadworks, of disruption, health & safety and urban signage.
  • Biking
    Biking
    57 images
    A collection of incidental bikes, bicycles, cycles and cyclists, by Richard Baker. On the urban road and the pavement, in the wilderness and in the gym. Being ridden, locked up and on their sides.
  • Runners
    Runners
    27 images
    Runners, by Richard Baker.
  • Statues
    Statues
    30 images
    A loose gallery of random statues and their relationship with surrounding incidental puns and occurrences.
  • Stoop
    Stoop
    54 images
    An on-going and experimental collection of people stoopings and bending downs.
  • With Spots
    With Spots
    20 images
    A loose gallery of random spots in the landscape and their relationship with surrounding incidental puns and occurrences.
  • Stripes
    Stripes
    51 images
    A loose gallery of random stripes in the landscape and their relationship with surrounding incidental puns and occurrences.
  • Crosses
    Crosses
    36 images
    Portraits of Christian crosses and the diagonal versions that erase, alter and identify.
  • Wildlife
    Wildlife
    18 images
    I'm interested in how depictions of the natural world, of wildlife and often an idyllic perspective of tradition, is being absorbed into the pseudo-landscape. This theme will continue so watch this space.
  • Blur
    Blur
    20 images
    A gallery of images using a deliberate use (or abuse?) of camera blur. Drawn from various sources of long-term projects and individual assignments, they reveal a more abstract aesthetic that might please the eye.
  • Abstracts
    Abstracts
    29 images
    Abstracts, by Richard Baker.
  • Numbered
    Numbered
    42 images
    The landscapes and details of the number.
  • Grounded
    Grounded
    42 images
    I have to be honest, I'm not sure this is enough of an amusing theme: People on the ground, people lying, people floating and people prone. So let's see where this goes and I'll prove myself right, or wrong. Early days but feedback welcome to richard@bakerpictures.com
  • Pyramids
    Pyramids
    4 images
    A growing series of landscapes that contain only one common denominator.
  • Union Jacks
    Union Jacks
    41 images
    A gallery of Britain, Britons and Britishness.
  • Urban Trees
    Urban Trees
    35 images
    Visual coincidences of generic trees. Part of a growing series for during 2012.
  • Parking No Parking
    Parking No Parking
    42 images
    Parking No Parking is an idea still in progress. Alongside a Photoshelter series about Britain's recession (called Bust - The Art of Recession, also unfinished), this is a collection of roadside clues about the places that motorists are encouraged to, or warned away from, leaving their vehicles. What I like is the unkempt, the individual and the dereliction of gates and doorways where business or home-owners feel the need to leave curt and officiously hand-painted notices in an otherwise world of uniformity where the printed sign and stencil rule. But there are also the formal parallels of parking bays that criss-cross our town centres that would otherwise been regarded as wastelands, making us keep a tidy order to our state-controlled urban lives. By exploring these two extremes of era and modernity, I hope to produce a group that engage and interest. A blog story about this project is at: http://wp.me/p3fbj-1v
  • You Are Here
    You Are Here
    9 images
    YOU ARE HERE I imagine that the signs which towns and complexes display with a geographical placing may disappear as we increasingly use online mappings. It would, I suggest, be yet another example of an extinction of landscape. While forever being encouraged to explore the great outdoors, the unknown and unfamiliar, our exact whereabouts are now answered immediately using the tech in our pocket. Nonetheless, we're often still left spiritually adrift in the world and the Universe. Always 'Out there somewhere'.
  • Shoes
    Shoes
    32 images

Richard Baker Photography

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