Nolan Preece: Making Connections Between Parallel Directions

This work is about process. It is about a personal journey into chemistry and invention and a search for the aesthetic in experimental photography. Artists try to capture what they see and feel, but at times only out of spontaneity and a series of small serendipities is the path ahead made clear. Photography lends itself to producing a multitude of effects difficult to obtain otherwise. It can be the most direct means of self-expression within time limitations since the image can rapidly be produced once the concept is in mind. Although process and concept in a photograph have an integral relationship and there is a delicate balance between the two, it is easy to overwhelm the concept with technical prowess thus making process the subject of the work.

Experimentation is everything to photography, both conceptually and technically. The photographer as inventor will use photographic mistakes to deviate from the historic development of photography, with or without a camera. Chemistry may be the least explored area when it comes to new image invention without a camera. The popularity of digital capture has pushed photography so far ahead that unexplored processes have been left behind as was the case in the early days of photography. It is a new day for chemical experimentation in the wet darkroom.

The fact that brilliant color effects can be created by chemical means on black and white photo paper leaves many questions unanswered. It is gold chloride that does the work to transform silver sulfide into vibrant color, and at the same time giving great longevity to the print. The Nolangram cliché-verre, printed on silver paper from a ghost matrix on glass then duo-toned in selenium, brings forth new exploration being done with camera-less photography. Also, unique to the chromogenic print are methods used to produce simple unique images. The photogram, the first process used to produce an image by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1834, is still with us even today.

This work is a sampling of new approaches to photography covering a span of 45 years. The evolution is not seamless. The bodies of work presented here were produced after much thought and inquiry. It is artistic nature to struggle with oneself and then come to some sort ofsubjective conclusion in resolving the work. A recent paradigm shift has occurred in photography, not unlike the one in both photography and painting more than a century ago, but all indicators point to a bright future for photography. Digital photography is now taking on the burden once carried by conventional photography and artistic exploration will continue with many outdated photographic processes in the years to come.

-Nolan Preece

 It seems I have always worked within what I call parallel directions. I was trained in the Ansel Adams tradition of the fine print and the zone system at Utah State University. I remember taking a zone system boot camp class from my favorite photo professor A.J. Meek. West coast photographers such as Ansel Adams, Ruth Bernard, Al Weber, Imogen Cunningham and others would frequent our campus giving workshops, lectures, exhibitions and critiques  (late 1960s to early 1980s). I didn't realize what a wonderful experience this was at the time. I have met with Al Weber many times in Carmel Highlands. We worked on a darkrooms book together before he passed away in 2016.

Winters were very cold in Cache Valley where Utah State is located. Subzero temperatures occurred for weeks at a time and my camera gear just wouldn't function outdoors. I began to play with chemistry in the darkroom during those cold winter months. When I started to work on my MFA, I broke with tradition and decided to do my thesis on the  "Sabattier Effect" or what is commonly known as solarization.

My second emphasis was printmaking, so I had a variety of solvents around the house. I became interested in the effects of smoke-on-glass simply because it could be put in an enlarger and printed as a negative. I accidentally dribbled some kerosene from the lamp I was using on to the smoke-on-glass and WOW the most beautiful array of patterns and 3D-looking landscapes unfolded before my eyes. I immediately started trying every solvent I had, finally settling on mineral spirits as the cleanest. I solarized some of the best "glassprints" and published them in my thesis in 1980. I had researched what Henry Holmes Smith, Frederick Sommer, Francis Bruguiere, Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy had done, however after looking for three more decades for a body of work done along these lines, I have found none. The process has recently been published in a national and an international publication. I jokingly call these glass prints "Nolangrams" after a nickname coined by a student of mine. In reality, it is called "cliché-verre."

Other chemical experiments soon followed. I went on to invent the "chemogram" a method of painting with chemistry on black & white photo paper and that by using gold toner yields brilliant colors with a cool/warm contrast between the silver sulfide and metallic silver in the print. Recently, I have invented a chemigram process using acrylic floor finish as a resist. Within communications and endorsements from Pierre Cordier, Father of the Chemigram, he has stated about my 2018 solo exhibition in New York City, "Looking at Nolan's chemigrams, I'm astonished! Nolan is presently one of the best artists in our fraternity. He has his own methods and applies them meticulously. He uses the effects of randomness in matter (a characteristic of our technique) but dominates them, which is what sets him apart from the hundreds of amateurs who bravely show their efforts on the internet. Nolan has a project in mind before embarking on it, he foresees what will happen." My most recent chemigram landscapes made by using acrylic floor finish can be seen at nolanpreece.com.

All the time I was tinkering with chemistry, I still pursued the fine print with my large format cameras. I started working in the "altered landscape" genre in 1981 when I realized, while working for a company named Bio Resources, that huge chunks of pristine desert were about to be bulldozed for oil shale development in eastern Utah. I had just received my MFA and several of us were working with what we called "manscapes." We knew about the work that Richard Misrach, Mark Klett, Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz were doing and, having been trained in the zone system, we were turning out some very handsome prints concerning the environment. I had also become a documentary photographer. My work with the altered landscape can be seen at nolanpreece.net.

I am still working in these two fine art photography opposites.This exhibition shows similarities between photographing found environments via the fine print, and experimentally building an image from scratch through invention.

-Nolan Preece