Nolan Preece
(Vernal, Utah, 1947 - )
American
Nolan Preece completed his BS in photography in 1973 and his MA with an emphases on photography and printmaking in 1980, both at Utah State University. A dedicated westerner, Preece has been a professional educator, lecturer and writer on photography all the while distinguishing himself through a photographic career that spans 40 years of experimental activity in all facets of photography. In his early photography, the artist focused on recording changing environments over time, producing landscape portfolios of the western United States (influenced by the work of Ansel Adams, particularly through training in Adams’s printing techniques, known as the zone system) as well as historical sites in Britain. His more unique contributions to his chosen medium, however, involve abstraction and began by the late 1970s.
In cameraless photography, he has devoted particular focus to the chemigram technique.Invented by Belgian artist Pierre Cordier in 1956, Preece describes a chemigram as “a mix of painting, printmaking, and photography,” created under room light through the use of silver-based papers or films with traditional photographic fixer and developer chemicals, often with the addition of additional materials that introduce different chemical and visual effects. Preece has also pursued numerous other darkroom and light room methods that both involve the camera and eschew its use altogether. As an innovator and experimenter, his work is informed by the pursuit of knowledge of the history, styles, and processes of photography as a medium. His intensive dedication to photographic technique extends into the medium’s use in laboratory, studio, commercial, and academic settings. Describing the breadth of his career, Preece notes that “This work is about process. It is about a personal journey into chemistry and invention and a search for the aesthetic in experimental photography.” Despite turning his focus largely away from the landscape photography of his early career, Preece notes that he remains interested in nature: “I use the chemigram framework to make statements about the environment…chemigrams reflect my relationship with the desert where I grew up in eastern Utah and now the Nevada desert where I currently live. The desert is my home and my passion. These resonances flow through my work.” Preece thus considers many of his works to have a place in the broad movement for environmental preservation.
Over the course of his career, Preece held academic position in photography at Casper College in Wyoming, Utah State University, and Truckee Meadows Community College in Nevada. His1 Nolan Preece, “Chemical Dimensions,” text provided by Nolan Preece.photographs are included in the public collections of the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, the Utah Museum of Art, the Nevada Museum of Art, and the Snell and Wilmer Collection, and his work is found nationally in numerous private collections. The artist ran a commercial fine-arts gallery in Virginia City, Nevada from 1995–2001, and he served as a member of the Collections Committee of the Nevada Museum of Art in 1998–1999.
This text has been adapted, with significant adjustments, from Dominique Nahas, “Nolan Preece: Bio,” text provided by Nolan Preece
Reno, Nevada
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