A Photographic Life - 289: Plus Robin Weaver

In episode 289 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on the passing of photographer John Sevigny, the fact that you are never too old to learn and how life informs our photography. Plus this week, photographer Robin Weaver takes on the challenge of supplying Grant with an audio file no longer than 5 minutes in length in which he answer’s the question ‘What Does Photography Mean to You?’ A 1970s travelling exhibition in Cardiff of photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson made Robin Weaver want to be a documentary photographer. He completed a three-year course at Newport College of Art and then joined the South Wales Argus newspaper as a trainee press photographer. After six years he broadened his horizons – travelling to the USA and Australia where he worked for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. On returning to England he again worked for newspapers in Kent, Hampshire and Derbyshire. However, the landscape of Derbyshire inspired him to take his photography in another direction. Now 'retired' from newspapers, he continues to make work and photograph that which inspires him working with his wife writer Helen Werin producing travel articles for magazines and newspapers. Cafe Royal Books have published two books of his work South Wales in the 1970s and South Wales Summer Carnivals 1970s. In addition he has self published two books of his work titled A Different Country and Snappers. https://robinweaver.co.uk This podcast is also available on Spotify, Google and Apple podcasts as well as wherever you usually get your podcasts. Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts. Scott’s next book is Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, Orphans Publishing, is on sale February 2024. © Grant Scott 2023