Ray Jerome Baker was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 photographer, film maker and lecturer, especially noteworthy as a pioneering photographer, and in particular for his studies portraying the people of Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

.

Biography

Baker was born near Rockford, Illinois

Rockford, Illinois

Rockford is a mid-sized city located on both banks of the Rock River in far northern Illinois. Often referred to as "The Forest City", Rockford is the county seat of Winnebago County, Illinois, USA. As reported in the 2010 U.S. census, the city was home to 152,871 people, the third most populated...

 in 1880. From 1898 till 1903 he lived in Saint Paul, Minnesota

Saint Paul, Minnesota

Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city...

, where he studied mechanics and photography. In 1904 he moved to Eureka, California

Eureka, California

Eureka is the principal city and the county seat of Humboldt County, California, United States. Its population was 27,191 at the 2010 census, up from 26,128 at the 2000 census....

, where he ran a commercial photography studio and became a lifelong friend of Jack London

Jack London

John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...

. 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.

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 Baker were hand-colored by his wife Edith.

Baker traveled to New Zealand and to the US mainland where he visited Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

 and Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

. 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,

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

His 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.

Collections and archives

• Bishop Museum
  Bishop Museum
  The Bishop Museum , is a museum of history and science in the historic Kalihi district of Honolulu on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu...
  
  , 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.

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

External links

• Bishop Museum webpage (includes photo)