'The Adventures of Effie Baker' Historical Documentary

If Feie didn't tell her story, someone has to tell her story, she didn't plan any of her career, this great career or this career to become a

historical

photographer, she just developed because she took advantage of the opportunities that were presented to her. from her, my name is Graham Hassel and I grew up in Sydney and just by coincidence or chance, you know, good luck, I was part of the Bahai community in Sydney at the time Effie Baker was living there at the National Bahay Center . National Center on Tulang Road Paddington, so I grew up with the sound of Effie's voice, the bubbly nature of her.

When we were kids, we were always glad that Effie gave us that attention, that maybe the older people went about the business of the day and weren't looking. to children, so she was different from that and I became interested in the B story while studying in other fields and it quickly became apparent that she happened to be one of those people who had an important role in the story. history of the Australian Bah community which spread to the history of the Bah community elsewhere, so Effie, who was born in 1880, was sent from Goldsboro to Bellet to live with her grandparents with Captain Baker and his wife.

She grew up here, the Bellat observatory. Baker family, you had generations of the family living here at the observatory. Her grandfather is known for the telescope at the observatory in Ballad. There was nothing PA with the Baker telescope, it was such a huge instrument, he was captain of a ship. He ended up in Victoria during the gold rush and the story is that he couldn't get enough crew to sail because they were all going to the goldfields, so he joined them. He was a master instrument maker, in fact he won awards at major Melbourne exhibitions. Bellet is a notable cultural city that is having its influence on Effie.

She loved to play watching her grandfather as he tinkered in his workshop doing various things, of course it is the important period when women are simply demanding the right to vote I think all the women

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s would have been very strong in that movement to be equal citizens, which was a very strong movement in the 1890s and also in 192, when Australia was one of the first places in the world to give women the right to vote, it was the late 1890s, when Effie still lived here, when her Aunt Elizabeth gave her her own camera and Elizabeth was a notable photographer in her own right.

Photography only basically evolves as an indoor medium in particular, but Elizabeth is becoming passionate about photography around 1890 and taking photographs outdoors, but the most interesting thing is taking astronomical photographs, so she used the Baker telescope to help her take wonderful photographs of the stars and constellations and of young Effie, his little niece, while she was at art gallery school. studying painting and drawing, he's learning all about the art of photography from his aunt and he's combining those skills beautifully, you know, he's getting this encouragement from an older family member who saw his painting and drawing skills and thought that she might also be good at this, uh, this new photography technology that we just discovered in the archive, the only large painting I know of that remains of effes, it's signed Baker 1896 Faith, born March 1880, so this makes it her job as she is 16 years old and once again it just shows that she has taken this love of color from the Australian bush and being an artist she then experiments with taking photographs so she goes out around the area and takes beautiful photographs of landscapes that she evidently developed herself. quite adventurous photographs for a young woman to have that ability at the age of 18 she liked to make up photo albums and then give them as gifts to family members her photographs are not a snapshot of the young woman simply with friends there is a lot of thought put into these compositions this type of photography uh to me it reminds me of the work of Arthur Stren uh there's a famous work called Fires on Lapstone Tunnel and when I see this type of work by Effie this was taken um in the late 1890s and it's more or less similar to the time of that famous Australian painting.

She is really trying to represent the Australian in a landscape of a sailboat in Port Adelaide. Iconic places from novels and movies like waterfalls, dams and reservoirs and seaside fishermen on the grass, these kinds of themes she brought to her photography at a time when women weren't really recognized for their technological skills; she really was at the forefront of development. of photography in Australia, let alone being a woman, female artists did not tend to gain public recognition, but she first came to prominence with a series of pamphlets she produced on Victorian wildflowers. If you took a black and white photographic plate of the particular wildflower she was looking at and then hand-colored it, that hand-colored image would then go through a three-color printing process, so it was in the 1940s 1950s 1960 197 when she was making part of her life with this type of work, she also really makes a name for herself as a model maker, a big waiting list of people on her books who want to buy these doll houses, that sounds very old fashioned now , but in the 1920s and 1930s, press reports suggest that these dollhouses were highly sought after.

Photographs of her as a young woman working on these small toys were often based on the theme of the Australian landscape and native Australian animals. It is around 1922 when she makes new friends in Melbourne through the Theosophical Society and is then introduced to the Bahai. religion and this, of course, totally changes her life. There was a movement that was big in the early 20th century called the new thought movement, the theosophical society, uh, it's part of that, but new thought was an aspiration to find new ways of thinking, I was attending conferences in Melbourne, looking for new ideas and new inspiration, and at one of these meetings he met this gentleman called Hyde Dunn and he and his wife had arrived from California in April 1920 to bring the Bahai teachings to Australia he spoke of the need for independent investigation of the True and this was the line Effie responded to, she said: I've never thought about that, well I raised a Christian, everything I did was just because that's what my family was like, I haven't thought about this in the years since the First World War, there was a lot of questioning of religion, you know, Australia has always been a sectarian society which, during the 19th century, there was there.

There was a big divergence between Catholics and Protestants and it was very important for families at that time that women like her, who had a brother who went to war and he was psychologically damaged, began to question this relationship between support for the war and church membership, how women were involved in the mainline churches, the most you could do would be run a destination, you know you could raise funds, but you couldn't hold any important positions at all and I think that would have been one of the great attractions of the high faith when she first encountered it, that women and men are treated with absolute equality, perhaps she thought her life was already on an established path in Melbourne as an artist and craftswoman. and maybe she thought that's what she would be doing for the foreseeable future, but all of that was overturned by this meeting with the duns and upon learning of the Bahai teachings, she went up to hide Dan, she said: I accept what you have said and she of that.

At that time he embraced these B teachings and became good friends with CLA and Hyan was not only the first woman in Australia to declare her faith in bahola and become a bahai um and as such was highly regarded by the Australian bigh community, but who was also a notable person in her own right as a photographer, this is a photo of Clara and Hyde Dunn taken in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens in 1924 and I'm pretty sure it's

effie

s that she was traveling with them at the time and this is became An iconic photo of the couple, once she decided she wanted to be high, opened up her worldview to not just think about Victorian Australia and, in fact, not just think about the Western tradition, but also to open up the idea that yes, she is a Westerner, she is Australian, she is Victorian, eh, but she is a citizen of the world.

The paint used to have a lid and she had the habit of licking the brush to give it a little moisture and maybe change the color and she got lead poisoning and the doctor. she said you had to stop painting the doctors suggested a good long rest a sea trip would be good for her she traveled with clar and hy dun so the next period of her life is a very active period in 1923 1924 where she is traveling with the dun to Perth in South Australia to Hobart and living with them and helping them, they are between 15 and 20 years older than her, she hired Clar and Hyun, as she called her spiritual parents who introduced her to the B teachings in 1924 again it happens somewhat remarkable, meet Martha Root now Martha Root is a global traveler, she is a journalist by profession and she had easily become a big city a decade before and had started traveling the world, so if you meet this global traveler who is An independent Western woman who is also committed to promoting the Be principles, she travels with Marut to New Zealand, Holland and Wellington.

Marthur was a global wind of activity, he showed what it is like, in a very energetic way, to reach the public with the Bahai message and it was through this meeting with Marthur that, if he found out about this group of New Zealand bahis who only They knew the Baha'i teachings since late 1922, they decided to go to Hyer and meet the shy Fendy and see the holy places of the Baha there. FY was the head of the Baha faith and S was a young man in his 20s and Marth Rud said to him: why don't you go? and he said: okay, I'll go and I think it's from that moment on that photography will be very important to her again and she accepted immediately, but she thought she was going to take a 3 month trip, the plan was to visit hia uh and see the sites of bah Holly and that is called a pilgrimage, so I had intended to go to England to see the motherland, as was often the case, it was a common thing, in a sense, to make a pilgrimage back to the motherland and learn where Australian society had some of its origins and then he intended to return to Australia now the boat trip um It was quite fun, made a lot of friends when you travel on these boats that take many weeks to cross the sea, they had a daily newspaper and he managed to put something in there about his Australian children's toys etc., no doubt his grandfather.

She would have told him about her days as a sailor and his

adventures

as a sailor. It's interesting to think about Effie and then taking this long sea voyage from New Zealand to go to the Middle East. I think Effie is notable in several different ways. dimensions uh one is her interesting technical stuff uh she's interested in science she's interested in the scientific aspects of light she's interested in geography and when I say interested in geography she's interested in the distances uh between locations and the time it takes to travel there So when traveling by boat to Port Sade in Egypt on the way to Palestine, taking note of the distance in northern miles they traveled each day, another distraction took the form of seven coral islands fringed by narrow reefs known as the Brothers, the northernmost island was only 33 feet high and 4 miles long and the southernmost is only 20 feet high and 200 feet long.

The abnormal refraction she observed had sometimes allowed islands to be cited as far away as 100 miles away. Now, what kind of woman writes this kind of thing in a diary? She was very good with the pen, she was very descriptive, she could narrate in a way that one could imagine her travels, whether she was passing through, as Silon was called. Columbo uh and she would describe what it was like to be on the ship on her trip to Palestine, but being on hia she could literally talk to the family members of the central figures, particularly the daughters of Abdul Bahar, who she spent a lot of time with and They told her stories of what happened in Persia, what happened during the family's exiles, so I was able to write these stories down and send them back to the Australian, as she says the house is. a laborious hive of great work Splendid division of labor but with an omnipresent unity of heart.

I have never seen the necessary subordinations of organized service so full of a sense of dignity and essential quality as here I thought in the spirit of such devotion. Cooperation and cheerful self-subordination were the potential solution to those great problems of class and caste that affect society so much today. Everything he had heard about the Duns and he goes to Hy and sees it in Shien's family, the descendants of Bahola. In a few moments, Shogi Fendi came to greet us. His step was quick and decisive. Also, his way of speaking, but the sweetness of his countenance and the bright and alert expression of his eyes conveyed to his wonderful tenderness of heart that radiated towards you such gentleness and simplicity, you felt immediately at ease as if a weight had been lifted from your chest and a great peace reigned.

It was a wonderful interview that I have neverYou'll forget when she left Hia to go to England with some of Shogi's family members. she said to look when you finishEngland, can you come back and visit us again? And she said, "Okay, I'll do it again." This intuitive kind of spontaneous nothing stopping her, she just changed her ticket and came back and when she came back, Shog Fendy was out of town, he was traveling. and then the family said, wait until he comes back and she said, "Okay, well, everyone, I'll wait a few weeks." She finally came back and then the family asked Chendi and said if she had been of great help to us in so many practical things. ways he's helped us here he might be able to stay even longer shy vendy had this conversation with eie and he said you know, i think you should really go back and spend time with cla and hyde d and you know there's a lot of things that do. work to do in Australia and also said you know a general always keeps his troublesome troops close to him and sends good generals far away, hinting that he was going to fire her because he could trust her and the next day he said: she and I've reconsidered that I'd like you to stay and she said oh obviously shogi fendy I'm one of the troublesome troops you need to keep an eye on so they had a good laugh about it being an open state and he's very impressed by her knowledge of photography and also for his modeling skills.

She made models of the landscape to help develop the gardens around this new lodge that was being built for Western visitors. Many pilgrims came from Eastern speakers. fasci or Arabic or other languages ​​coming from India, Iran, but now there were pilgrims coming from the west and they literally needed different care, maybe different ways of making themselves comfortable in their rooms, different food in the 1920s, so Effie she was able to do this and so for 11 years she was the hostess of Western Pilgrim House in hia, that was her main role in that same year 1925 he had in mind to establish what he called the bahai yearbook not only for the bahai community around the world but also for the bah to present it. to people in government or other people in authority to explain what was happening and it's fairly recent.

I think there's a photo of Effie in the first one. She is Miss Effie Baker from Melbourne, Australia, who traveled with Miss Martha Root to be a teacher and lecturer. in a notable troop throughout that country, Eid this day is really just a pilgrim's house hostess and yet it had such an impact on Shendi and the editors of this yearbook that they put up a photo, you know, I say it's present because that's how it was. You know, it was a harbinger of things to come because in later years Fe's photos populated the yearbook from the '30s, '40s to the '50s and beyond.

Mount Carmel is one of those famous mountains referred to in the Old Testament and there she was living at. The foot of this Holy Mountain in a sense is linked to all prophetic religions and she was tasked with capturing in her photographs the progressive beautification of the land bah there and she would never have dreamed that her art would lead her to that role. I know in some ways you could say that taking a photo of a mountain covered in rocks and crags is a very difficult thing to make look interesting and yet we can look at his first photos of the panorama of Mount Carel and there is an interest visual there. which she somehow manages to capture, which is quite extraordinary.

I think she had a sense of what I call Fidelity. I think that's why Shogy was happy to keep her in Hyer because she had the feeling that in Effie she found someone whose word was true. shog gendi as a leader of the bahah faith in the 1920s she wanted to bring this story to the west, she was known in the east, but she wanted to do a translation of a book and she wanted to publish it in the west. DOR Breakers is a history book. It is the effort of a man, his name was Nabil Zarandi and it was his effort to gather the story because he realized in his time that these stories had not been gathered, so he approached the people to know the stories.

The significance of this book is that it records the early history of the Baha Faith beginning in the 1840s with a series of tumultuous events surrounding the prophetic figure of Bob and his followers, the way they were treated by the clergy at that time and by the government leaders, the Shah, his expulsion from the country, but in the midst of all that had not been recorded the emergence of Bahah as a prophetic figure who followed Bob and established the high Faith in many places throughout Persia towards the north and south and center where these

historical

events took place. through photographs nor the many relics by relics we refer to the clothing worn by these early figures feathers, they wear anything that is a memento of them that may provide some way of understanding their life and destiny.

The Fendi shogi had been asking the Bahis in Persia. I had been wanting to send these photographs for some time, but they had taken a long time to arrive, there were several reasons why there simply weren't many competent photographers in the country, but secondly, photography was quite a dangerous occupation because at that time the authorities were very nervous. of foreign espionage and in fact to be fair to them there was a lot of foreign espionage at the time, Persia was not a strong country and was subject to spheres of influence of the Western powers and there were literally people traveling through disguised as geographers or geologist or botanist who was taking photographs, but in reality they were gathering intelligence and, of course, that intelligence would have helped those various Powers when it came to the Second World War.

Shog Gendi knew his photography skills and said If you can, you can go to Persia for me. I need to photograph all of these sites and here is a list, but of course that was also controversial in the eyes of many who did not understand the origins of the faith or its purposes, and whether they knew that Effie traveled among them for that purpose. Her life would have been in danger. The dangers were multiple. It was not just because of her Mission B, but because in the eyes of many foreigners and infidels, she was. She wasn't Muslim, so in 1930 she went, they thought it would take 3 months, in the end it took 8-9 months because she wouldn't leave until she had everything on that list, she took two cameras, some film and a plate glass when she had relics and realized that the codc camera was not right for that c was for wide angle and then when Shin said take the relics too she said I need to take a second camera and that was the camera with glass plate, so she had to make a second trip to the only photography store in Hia and Sh and he said buy everything they had, buy all the stock.

I mean, Baker was one of the original archists, so it's interesting to see her work because she was an archist at the same time. preserving history and also making it at the same time, by creating these photographs she was contributing to the arcs and also building memories for future generations so they could see what was done in the past, what things were like and the quality that was achieved . She captured all the details, the emotion, the lighting, everything that she managed to capture in those photographs so that now we can see what she saw. Some of these places were so remote that there were no roads yet, certainly for northern Iran, she says in her memory that she was the first and these people say that you are the first European to come to our town my car with a flat tire on the way to the Town of San so obviously she left the car she took a camera with her and then the villagers here who are almost there and have run out, so her name is East greets the West and this is a woman from the village who comes out to greet her, but to get there in some cases she went on a donkey and those donkeys and horses that she used had saddlebags and they went on mountainous roads here you see Effie with her horse uh and you can see the paths that they traveled and there were times when she was thrown from a donkey He landed on the ground and continued to have pain in his shoulder for days at a time until it healed on its own.

She now explains that in each view she would take three exposures and develop them so she could choose between exposures to see which one was the best and at the end of her journey. She left a whole series of those with the tan bahis and mailed a set to hia and then brought a set herself because she realized there would be no chance of returning. We have Fe's original passport in this file. and there is a photo of F there and she obviously needed this passport to make this trip at a time when she was leaving the states of Tan, which is the capital city of Persia, the guards stopped her and he told her where you come from. she said I come from Australia and he said where Australia she said about 4,000 faracs and she thinks one farac was about 3 and A2 miles she had made a calculation of that he put on his cap and said what topic and she said Australia I belong to King George of England and I'm a British subject and she said EV, he was quite pleased with that and gave her order B, which is to go.

There were other times when she had a more difficult time, especially when she was returning from Persia and she had all her photographic equipment and a set of photographs and some guards not in Persia but on the Iraq side, which was a British colony or mandate in that time under the League of Nations and they tried to extract some money from her so they could collect her suitcases and she said no she said I'm not going to do that there is nothing that is subject to tax it's all my personal belongings and they said well We are going to take these suitcases to our main headquarters, she said okay, see you there and by chance there was someone at that main headquarters who said well, what are you doing here?

She said, well, these guys are trying to get something out of me for my suitcases and he said, oh, we'll do it. she arranged that and she talked to the head of customs and they cleared it because there was nothing taxable there, there was no new goods, there were no trade goods and she was free to go, so that's an example of how she stood her ground, just in old terms he was 5 foot three he was not a very tall person he was quite small in stature but he was bold and daring and everything he did was among the many significant and there are hundreds of photographs in this book but I am choosing one which is the barracks in tabz, the site of Bob's martyrdom in 1850 and this is a barracks square and there is an with a rope and executed by a firing squad and she records in her Memoir that on Sunday morning I met the chief of police and he invited me to visit him at his office in the square where the bar was shot, I saw the place where he was killed most of The buildings have been raised to the ground to build more modern ones, except the part where he was hanged and shot, this had been kept as a temporary prison kitchen until the more modern one was finished, so I'm pretty sure this doesn't exist anymore and that's one example and there are many other photos in this book that are an example of how to capture a historical image that no longer exists.

We owe it to Effie for making that effort to really have her at the center of things and she did that. Her design to be there was simply through this desire to serve and the recognition by others that she had these capabilities to serve and she was very privileged to be in these positions. Shogi fenny's intention for this book was to inspire the bah in the west. He said that this is what the Bahis in Persia have gone through at the beginning of their faith and um, the Western Bahis were not aware of that in detail, this book gave the details and would inspire them to carry the B message, for example, throughout the Americas through North America Central America South America and eventually to other parts of the world, so it is an inspirational book, but based on these stories of heroism of the first Bahis to be published in Dawn Breakers, creates a lasting testament to his work and his service was just a 9 month period of travel and yet in some sense an eternal legacy of having these photos available to the world. she was a tent person, she knew that she had performed well in her life, she had served her family, she had served. her community and she she had a real sense of joy, you know, which is very moving to see someone in her later years who you get the sense that she felt satisfied with what she had accomplished.