Phoenix

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In standard chemigram works like these (which he began creating in 1981) Preece utilized 8x10 silver-based paper in room light, treating it with traditional photographic chemicals applied in a quite non-traditionally and painterly fashion. In a chemigram, photographic developer turns the image black while fixer creates white, and it is possible to mix the two for a variety of effects. Unlike typical snapshot photography that is instantaneous or standard darkroom developing that is temporally sensitive, the chemigram process can be durational and open ended until the paper is submerged in a liquid bath that deactivates the chemical processes involved. It is possible to handle these materials quite creatively—for example, in Phoenix Preece may have coated different portions of a paintbrush in fixer and developer to generate the sharp contrasts of black and white in the shape at the center of his composition. He also used gold toning to add color to the works, which (as silver gelatin prints) would have otherwise been solely black and white. Between the artist’s suggestively mythological titles, his painterly drips and splatters, and his interest in desert subject matter, a comparison to Abstract Expressionist painting, and Jackson Pollock’s work in particular, is readily available