Ray Jerome Baker

Ray Jerome Baker (1880, Rockford, Illinois – 1972) was an American photographer, film maker and lecturer. [Robert van Dyke, "Hawaiian Yesterdays: Historical Photographs of Ray Jerome Baker" with text by Ron Ronck Mutual Publishing Honolulu 1982, ISBN 0935180036]

Ray Jerome Baker was born near Rockford, Illinois in 1880. From 1898 till 1903 he lived in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he studied mechanics and photography. In 1904 he moved to Eureka, California, where he ran a commercial photography studio and became a lifelong friend of Jack London. He married a local school teacher, Edith Frost, in 1906.

In February 1908, Baker visited Hawaii with his family. In August, after his return to Eureka, he was charged with taking obscene photographs, and paid a fine. In 1910 Baker moved to Honolulu with his wife and their son Earl Frost Baker.Jennifer Saville, Don Severson and Michael Horikawa, "Finding Paradise: Island Art in Private Collections" (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 2002; ISBN 0824826574) p. 202.]

Baker remained active as a photographer and travel lecturer until 1959. He produced thousands of photographic images as black and white prints, postcards and books, and as glass plates. When lecturing, Baker used hand-painted lantern slides to dramatize his presentations; he made larger hand-colored glass plates backlit with daylight when exhibited. The glass plate lantern slides and many of the photographs taken by Ray Jerome Baker were hand-colored by his wife Edith.

Baker traveled to New Zealand and to the US mainland where he visited Mark Twain and Thomas Edison. Otherwise, he spent his time photographing the land, people and plants of Hawaii. He did commercial work for cane and pineapple plantations, and provided tourists arriving on ocean liners with mementos, mostly photographic postcards and bound books of photographs. His photographs appeared in mainstream media, including "The National Geographic Magazine", [Gilbert Grosvenor, "The Hawaiian Islands", "The National Geographic Magazine", Vol XLV, No.2 (February 1924), p.169.]

Baker wrote a memoir in 1964 titled "Odyssey of a Camerman".

Ray Jerome Baker's studies of the Pacific people of Hawaii are an ethnographical and environmental resource. His "Racial Patterns in Hawaii" and his "Familiar Hawaiian Plants", document a changing environment. [Ray Jerome Baker, "Racial Patterns in Hawaii", "Mid-Pacific Magazine," pp. 317-322, October-December 1935]

Collections and archives

*Bishop Museum, Honolulu. A large collection of original prints, negatives, glass plate lantern slides, and ephemera.
*Swanlund-Baker Photograph Collection, Humboldt State University Library. Large collection of correspondence and photographs from Baker's time in Northern California. [cite web
title = Swanlund-Baker Photograph Collection
work = Humboldt State University Library - Special Collections
publisher = Humboldt State University
date = 2004-06-14
url = http://library.humboldt.edu/humco/holdings/swanlund.htm
accessdate = 2008-08-17]

elected works

Studio publications

*1912 - 1935 "Alohaland" 5″×7″
*1912 - 1935" Hawaii" 5″×7″
*1912 - 1935 "Hawaii-Nei" 5″×7″
*1914 "Hawaiian Types" printed booklet
*1914 "Palms and other Flora of the Hawaiian Islands" printed booklet
*1914 "Hawaiian Island Views" printed booklet
*1914 "Homes, Historical Buildings and Places of Interest in the Hawaiian Islands" printed booklet
*1936 "The Romance of Raw Sugar"
*1938 "Familiar Hawaiian Plants"
*1938 "Camera Studies in Portraiture"
*1938 "Hawaii the Isle of a Thousand Wonders"
*1938 "Alohaland" 11″×4″
*1939 "Hawaiian Yesterdays"
*1941 "Hawaii Then and Now"
*1943 "Scenic Hawaii"
*1945 "Men of our Armed Forces"
*1945 "Art Forms in Plant Structures"
*1964 "Odyssey of a Cameraman", a memoir

References