The Photography of Mike Ware:
Short Biography

Dr MIKE WARE graduated in chemistry at the University of Oxford (1962), where he subsequently obtained his doctorate in molecular spectroscopic research (1965). He has followed a career in academic science, lecturing and researching in structural and inorganic chemistry at the University of Manchester (1964-92); becoming a Chartered Chemist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (1982).

He is now independently committed to studying the science, history, conservation, and art of alternative photographic processes. A Kodak Photographic Bursary (1984) initially supported his research on printing in noble metals, which was recognised by the award of the Hood Medal of the Royal Photographic Society (1990), of which he was a Fellow, and by the Richard Farrand Memorial Award of the British Institute of Professional Photographers (1991).

Dr Ware acts as a consultant to the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford, England, and has supervised postgraduate research in photograph conservation at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art, and in alternative photographic processes at the University of Derby. He was the first External Examiner for the new MA course in Photographic Studies at De Montfort University.

The results of his technical research on improving historic processes, such as the platinotype, cyanotype and chrysotype, have been published in both the scientific and popular literature, and he is the inventor of the new argyrotype process (1991). Several of his historical studies of early photography have appeared in the academic periodical, History of Photography. The conservation of the first photographs on paper, photogenic drawings by Henry Talbot, is the subject of his book Mechanisms of Image Deterioration in Early Photographs (1994), and the cyanotype process invented by Sir John Herschel is dealt with in his book Cyanotype: the History, Science and Art of photographic printing in Prussian Blue (1999) both published by the Science Museum, London. He is currently working on his third book on the chrysotype process.

By way of a counterbalance to this scholarly activity, he is also an exhibiting photographer and (since 1981) has shown his personal work widely in galleries in Europe and the USA; examples have been acquired for several national collections. He conducts specialist workshops and masterclasses in alternative printing techniques throughout the country, and has appeared on BBC Televison in the Open University series The Chemistry of Creativity (1995). Regarding photography as an ideal meeting ground for science and art, he is attempting to bridge the gap between the ‘Two Cultures’ by using chemical science to enhance the art of photographic expression.

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