BPH has just become aware of the passing of Mike Weaver on 24 June 2024. For many he will be remembered as the co-editor with his partner Anne Hammond between 1991 and 2000 of History of Photography. From 1978 to 1983, he worked as chairman of the Photography Advisory Group of the Arts Council of Great Britain, and was a photographer in his own right, although he would claim otherwise.
Amongst other titles, he authored The Photographic Art: Pictorial Traditions in Britain and America (London: Herbert Press, 1986) and The Art of Photography 1839-1989 (Yale, 1989), and edited British Photography in The Nineteenth Century: The Fine Art Tradition (CUP, 1989). His published works stretched from Talbot, Cameron and Coburn, to Strand and Mapplethorpe.
I was fortunate to hear several of his conference lectures. They were always interesting and often provocative, offering a distinctive perspective and reading the work of historical photographers. As Geoff Batchen notes: 'Mike Weaver was always a powerful presence in any gathering devoted to the study of photography: learned, single-minded and articulate (and sometimes also irascible) and determined to bring the focus back to pictures and their artistic capacities, where he thought it belonged.'
An obituary by Geoffrey Batchen was published on History of Photography website on 10 December 2024: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03087298.2024.2417527?src=exp-la
Anne Hammond writes about Mike's own photography in 'Mike Weaver. The Eye of the Photo Critic' in Studies in Photography (Scottish Society for the History of Photography, Winter 2024, 122-123)
A Polaroid portrait of Mike Weaver by Mark Haworth-Booth is in the NPG collection. See: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp152263/mike-weaver
Image: © Mark Haworth-Booth. Mike Weaver, colour Polaroid print, 1978-1983. NPG Collection, London, given by Mark Haworth-Booth, 2005. NPG x199233. Reproduced with the photographer's permission.
Comments
Mike was one of the people I most liked and admired when I worked in the UK. I met him first in Exeter in the early '70s, then had an ineresing discussion after a talk the gave at the ICA when I worked at the Photo Sudy Center. In that talk the menioned some research his father Herbert Weaver was doing which led me to visit the father (in Brighton?) and invesigate his fascinaing if unorhodox research. Mike became a friend into his years at ACGB. I am pleased to learn of so much more that engaged him in subsequent years, but saddened that it took his death to learn it. He was a wonderful, open individual and deserves to be acknowledged and celebrated.
So sad to hear of Mike's death so many months ago. I worked with him often in the 1980s & 90s on various exhibitions at the Barbican & then the 1989 150 Years of Photography exhibition at the Royal Academy. He was always challenging, always questioning. My love to Anne Hammond.
As a young curator coming to Britain or the first time in 1976 I sought Mike Weaver out about Pictorialism for some reason we ended up sitting on some steps talking for quite some time. We met again maybe twice with the warm and wonderful Anne I will always remember the way he took time to ernestly discuss Pictorial photography as if I was someone I can see the moment still he was someone who came at photography from different corners of the room always stimulating.