Dancing At Shutter Speed: A Reflection of Terry Baker’s Photography By His Daughter

Behind the camera is a dapper man with a button-down, slacks, a fedora or flat cap, bushy brows, a ‘stache slightly parted at the Cupid’s bow, and a Syracuse in Focus lanyard. He always had yellow pads filled to the brim with undecipherable chicken scratch. His steady hands, except for his slight curlicue pinky, jammed too many times from playing ball, held the glassy eye that was the conduit to my memory. If eyes are windows to the soul, the camera is an oculus of the user. While there are few photos of my dad, his portfolio of Syracuse is a portrait of himself. 

My dad wouldn’t call himself a memory worker, but someone who was in the right place at the right time. In a way, his archive is a map of movement. My dad was always on the ground, so he witnessed community moments. He was always good at positioning himself. He was there the year that the Southside got its first grocery store, a Price Rite. His studio at Sylvester (now SU dorms) was a confluence of these changes, which I can’t help but think influenced him. Across the street, he could walk to the poet Omani Abdullah’s lemonade stand, which was adjacent to the projects left in disrepair that have now disappeared from city records altogether.

Light rails—happen when long exposures show intense movement—cause lines of color that streak my memory. If my dad had any signature, it would be these for musical performances. It’s paradoxical: while the shutter slows down, the fast movement of the environment paints the still with vitality.

“I will not focus on making Syracuse a better place to live, but rather on identifying the things that make it worth living here in the first place,” he once said. As he took on the role of artist-reporter of a specific place in time, he channeled his heroes, Charles “Teenie” Harris and Gordon Parks. Another marker of that place was his experience of it: he was a resident on Syracuse’s Northside, a medical tech at my grandma’s ophthalmology practice, a freelance music critic for The Syracuse New Times, and a father raising two kids. 

When reconstructing my memory of him, it exists in the time signature of his camera. To the point that I can’t remember the first time I saw my dad with a camera. Just like the click, it was always there.

CLICK.

The past is a photomontage: Eternal Hope Worship Church services, the populated frenzy of NY State Fairs where I’d snag a garbage plate (pasta salad, burger meat, fries, with the works), the groove of festivals and sheen of fashion shows, Syracuse University (SU) symposia, the city united in college sports, our proximity to nature, maternity, senior, and family photos.

CLICK.

Pantomime praise dance troupes transcribing gestures through their bodies, a charismatic choir director gesticulating, and the sound of a ball hitting the baseball bat at a Chiefs’ game. On vacation, I once saw him take almost eight thousand photos in one day; imagine how many that’s been nearly 30 years.

CLICK.

Then 2020 brought silence, cavernous even.

One way he ensured that his practice lives on is through me, who adopted his wordsmith side, and his mentee, Najah Brown, who adopted his eye for photography. By being present for the litany of sports and after-school activities my brother and I were in, he’d pass his equipment on, providing Brown a sense of autonomy for the first time. “When I graduated high school, [he] gave me my first camera,” Brown recounts, “That changed everything... His belief in me and his generosity set me on a path I never could’ve imagined, opening doors to NY Fashion Week, Essence Magazine, [and] Bloomingdale’s. It’s his guidance, wisdom, and support that I carry with me every time I pick up my camera.”

As a nomad, those time signatures are broken up for me. I imagine what it would be like to live, be, and study in a city for 30 years. Not doing that feels like a sort of death. Now his archive exists in piecemeal: his website (currently down), his Instagram, two drives in his office, and the remainder in our damp garage. What does it mean to inherit an archive whose geographies are so separate? The certainty is that I hold his enchanted view of the world in each city where I reside.

All photos courtesy of Chenoa Baker.