Baker's Xmas Dozen in OUTSIDELEFT

Outsideleft is celebrating the holiday season with 12 Days of Xmas, each day a new image from photgrapher Mark Baker's back pages. It's a Baker's Xmas Dozen, for sure...

Mark Baker talks to Tim London

Photographer: Mark Baker I was born in south London but we moved down to the south coast when I was eleven.

I got my Boy Scouts badge in Photography when I was twelve. I got my fireman’s badge, as well. I’d already started doing photography at school because the metal work teacher had a dark room. I used to get bullied because we’d just moved down from London so I would hide in the dark room in the lunch hour so I didn’t get battered. It was a calling, it was a protective device as well.

When punk came along I remember seeing these pictures in NME and I thought, fuck, that is amazing. That’s when I picked up the camera for the second time. I hooked up with a local band, did a lot of live shots with them. The first proper shoot I did was of the vocalist of that band, Program. (see picture).

So I packed in my day job, went to night school, did an A level and managed to get into art college in Salisbury which specialised in advertising photography.

I ended up dating the singer of a feminist punk band called The Catholic Girls and her brother was quite instrumental in the music industry. He set up an independent record label, Operation Twilight, based in Beck Road, Hackney, funded by Les Discs Du Crepescule, and that led to me being commissioned, around 1982, to do a few portraits: Paul Haig out of Joseph K, The Pale Fountains, Roddy Frame. They sent me over to Belgium to photograph a band called Antenna, which included Isabelle Antenna who, subsequently, is well known in France as a Bossa Nova singer.

After art school I got a job at the BBC, running a photographic studio. I had twenty four hour access so I used it for bands - whenever there was an opportunity came up I used it for photographing groups. I was at the BBC from 1984 to 1989, when I got the job as in-house photographer for Sony Music.

When I joined it was (still) CBS Records. They’d just been bought by the Japanese. Quite a small building. So many hits came out from that building on Soho Square. The UK roster was massively successful in the States. So all this revenue was coming back to Blighty. Terence Trent D’Arby was massive. The Pasadenas. Paul Young. Sade. Alyson Moyet. The place was just awash with money.

I know record companies can get a bad press and there can often be a resentment between the artists and the record company, but they were just people I worked with. A lot of them were friends. It was a bit of a family, really. I reported to a head of corporate press. There was a lot of PR went on with record buyers from the major record stores like HMV. The after-show parties and things like that, it was PR, to keep everybody sweet and in the loop. People enjoyed having their photographs taken with these stars. It was just part of the job.

Mariah Carey had a management team around her. They were very specific about how you could photograph her. You’re only allowed to photograph her from one particular side. I think it was her left side. All these photo calls were orchestrated by a press officer. She would just fall into that position, when you did a line up, Mariah would automatically show you her best side.

You learned to hang back a little bit until the moment was right. When Liza Minelli did her album with Sony, there was a big party, she knew how to work the room. So I just hung back and followed her around and when she was talking to people I’d kinda move forward, she knew that was a cue to turn to camera and get a shot with these people so they’d have a shot with Liza.

The thing about Sony, it was a well-oiled machine. They had these people, really experienced in press and promotions and it evolved over time, from the American model. But I was always taking photographs outside of those institutions. I was taking pictures of bands before I even did my A level in photography. It was just something I did. There were a couple of indie papers I’d do live shots for. I was a photographer foremost and my jobs in those places (Sony& the BBC) was a secondary thing. It’s in my bones, in my blood to hang around with musicians and artists, too. That’s where I feel comfortable. I don’t really feel comfortable anywhere else!

I don’t think there was a time before that (the 80s) or afterwards when you could just be young, have an idea, collaborate with other people of the same age and the same ilk and shit would happen. It was a unique time and pretty special.

Baker's Xmas Dozen:
#1 AFRIKA BAMBAATAA
Bam Throws The Vs

I had a lovely couple of hours with him. He turned up with his crew. They were just so cool. Bam was one of the main guys on Leftfield’s Afrika Shox track. The thing about those two fingers was, Bam was well versed in doing publicity shots, so he was throwing some shapes, doing some signs, and I asked him, do you know why the British flick the Vs? And he said no. So I told him, the reason was, if you were a longbow man during the Norman conquest, if you were captured, they chop your fingers off, so you couldn’t fire a longbow. I said, it’s an act of defiance. You flick the Vs to say, you fucking ain’t got my fingers, mate. So immediately, he just went like… that!