photography
In the Summer 2015 edition of the Royal Photographic Society Contemporary Journal, Baker was quoted as saying "If the truth be known, I'm not a photographer, I just take photographs, and I take photographs because I can't paint - I make art, I write, I make music, I make videos - but I don't paint. However, I do bring all the sensibilities of painting to what I do. My photographs will regularly draw on the likes of Francis Bacon, Mark Rothko and Diego Velázquez, not so much as a plagiarism of aesthetics, but more out of the spirit in which their work was created. Maybe I'm just a frustrated painter, and when I learn to paint, I'll stop taking photographs - who knows?"
The essence of Baker's photography lies not in science or technique, but in what he chooses to photograph, and the subsequent manner in which he elects to communicate the inherent quality of his chosen subject. Like all technology, he sees the camera purely as a tool that he uses to reinterpret what he sees through his own conventions of composition and visual message, whereby he treats it's mechanics with the same virtual disdain expressed in his reluctance to be classified as a photographer. Echoing the sentiments of Gombrich's statement, that 'there is no such thing as art, there are only artists', Baker believes that photography is primarily about an individual's engagement with the world, where the camera merely records the distance between perception and image. Part photograph, part painting, Baker's images are both a vehicle for documentation and personal expression, and subsequently give clear justification for the admission of photography to the realms of fine art.
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