Cordier & Falk: the 'L'en-allée' pictures from 2012

Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk, Chimigramme 13/5/12 V, 15,5 x 10,5 cm, 2012

In the year 2011, having completed his treatise on chemigrams, Pierre Cordier emerged from semi-retirement in the south of France with renewed vigor and found a colleague, Gundi Falk, a Brussels-based painter, to help him advance the chemigram initiative further.  Together they embarked on a significant series of pictures entitled Pair-Impair, or Even-Odd, which they completed in phases between 2011 and 2013.  In many ways these pictures embody the best of the Cordier style: calipered grids overrun by a shower of classic chemigramic embroidery, an improvised balance of lights and darks in the key squares, and the many remaining squares processed out to a mackie line of absolute zero.  There are descriptions throughout this blog on how to do this but be advised, it's far from easy.  Here's an early version:

Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk, Chimigramme 17/9/11 Pair-Impair, 2011

And a later one:

Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk, Chimigramme 23.5.13, Pair-Impair, 2013

Meanwhile, the Brussels editor and gallerist Jean Marchetti approached Pierre and asked him if he could illustrate a delicate, bristly, highly charged, nearly unfathomable text entitled L'en-allée by the French poet Yaël Cange.  It was understood now that they were a team, Pierre and Gundi, and they accepted - yet without having the vaguest idea how challenging the poems of this writer, whom neither had heard of, were to be.  In the early months of 2012 they settled on a strategy of thinking about key words in both the poems and in the poet's life as a way to steer their work.  Gundi took the lead in coming up with sketches and mock-ups, which together they would criticize, modify, redo, and develop further around the table in Pierre's studio.  They put the Pair-Impair project for the while on quasi-hold.

Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk, Chimigramme 14/3/12 (detail), 10,5 x 17 cm, 2012

The title, L'en-allée, a seldom-used expression, is nowadays shrouded in high-poetic fog from the 19th century, perhaps from Valéry, and conveys the sense of 'setting out' or 'leaving for', of seeking what was once there but no longer is, yet it also contains the idea of just 'going away' or decamping, wandering, perhaps to unknown or undisclosed destinations, with many stages and hesitations.  It speaks of memory and loss, and the possibility of redemption at the end of a trajectory that may be as long as a lifetime, or of the despair of not attaining it at all.  In more recent literature it has been associated with the curt, aphoristic writing of the novelist Marguerite Duras. 

So when Cordier & Falk began producing material for the book, it was apparent their images would resemble 'normal' chemigram images such as seen in work across many artistic practices today, only slightly.  Nor would they be expected to, given their radical assignment.  We are in an oneiric world here.  In grappling with the tortured verses of Yaël Cange, the artists had to invent their own symbolic language of response and stake out their own territory, which may have represented also a sort of pushback, gently done, leavened at times with sly humor.  We find fragments of eyes, floating gamely, of ears and lips, of railway tracks leading blindly nowhere, of stars with the softness of a child's dream, diagrams of past and future, mandalas, blips suspended in space, erasures.

Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk, Chimigramme 22/5/12 II, 15,5 x 10,5 cm, 2012

For all that, the making of the marks on paper obeys what we expect of the chemigram procedure, following the rules of the trade: a puncture is begun somewhere, a cut, an abrasion, and it grows in time and space as the paper gets alternately bathed in fixer and developer.  The artists watch, terminating the action when they deem the moment right.  Nothing could be more straightforward.  Still, it is remarkable that Cordier and Falk have found a way to strip away years of refinement in chemigrams to arrive at an almost infantile level of attack, especially in the midst of creating their sophisticated suite Pair-Impair.  In so doing, they have managed the unexpected feat of matching poetry with poetry.  

We hear that Madame Cange was well satisfied with the work.

Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk, Chimigramme 13/5/12 VI, 15,5 x 10,5 cm, 2012

Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk, Chimigramme 22/4/12 IV, 15,5 x 10,5 cm, 2012

Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk, Chimigramme 14/3/12 (detail), 10,5 x 17cm, 2012

Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk, Chimigramme 25/3/12 I (detail), 15,5 x 10,5 cm, 2012

Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk, Chimigramme 13/5/12 IV, 10 x 10 cm, 2012

The book was printed at the end of May 2012, just days after the last chemigram left the water wash, in an edition of 600 copies on fine rag paper.  It is still available from the publisher, La Pierre d'Alun, Brussels, and elsewhere on the internet.  Definitely an item you may want to collect. 

   

Cameraless at Atelier pH7, Brussels

Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk, Chimigramme 11-6-13 I "Resurgence", 2013

In the quiet, leafy neighborhood of Uccle in Brussels, the quiet gentleman (and maestro) of alternative photography, Roger Kockaerts, has put up a show at Atelier pH7 of alternative work that runs until well into the summer.  If it were only for the van dyck browns, the palladiums, the carbon prints, the bromoils and orotypes and of course the gums, it would be worth seeing, but there is a double reason: a significant part of the show is devoted to cameraless work, in this case the chemigram, and some fascinating and instructive work it is.

The above piece, by the Brussels-based team of Pierre Cordier and Gundi Falk, demonstrates the devotion to exacting conceptions for which they are famous.  Here they compound that practice by using one of their frequent ploys, the hidden puzzle, an audience favorite since time immemorial.  If you stand back and squint real hard you can just make out the letters of the title, R-e-s-u-r-g-e-n-c-e, written left to right and then, as in a boustrophedon, a device popular in ancient Greece, from right to left in the line below and zigzagging back and forth down the picture.  As I say, you have to squint.  Who said boustrophedons were easy!  Yet is the supposed boustrephodon here actually a red herring, a trail leading to a misreading?  It's for you to decide.  Here's a blow-up of the lower left corner, which is elegant fun but unfortunately may not help at all:

detail, Resurgence

In a work like this, planning in advance is essential - everything must be scrupulously mapped out, the incisions, the larger boundaries, the form to be taken by the hidden letters of text, the areas to be masked from chemical assault.  'More Mondrian, less Pollock,' as Pierre has said - a lot more.  The good part is that once set in motion the process more or less proceeds to term on its own, and all the artist has to do is shift the paper from one tray to another.  Imperfections, blips, and other small visitations from the gods of photochemistry, when they happen, are accepted into the picture, indeed they are blessed as emblematic.  But I exaggerate somewhat.

To monitor progress (the new reader should review earlier how-to posts on chemigrams, such as this), the artist may use the thickness of dark and light lines as a measure or trace of ongoing activity, a chronometric record not unlike the growth rings of a tree - an idea which, the more we think of it, may connect chemigrams to the larger saga of natural history and to the seasons of the earth.  If you think this connection far-fetched, we've discussed themes allied to it before in other contexts, for instance in the rate of movement of mackie lines around the equator.  Critics and pundits in the future, if there is a future and there are critics, will want to expound on this.

Another work on view by the same team is 'Musigram', a remarkable piece depicting a fantasy musical score that features a staccato of bips, or congealed clumps of musical notes, against an opulent black.  Don't even think of playing it, it's only for viewing.  One attendee at the opening tried to hum it but failed, complaining he needed a bass line to keep time - or perhaps just a refreshed glass.

Pierre Cordier & Gundi Falk, Chimigramme 11-6-13 I "Musigram", 2013

Here's a closer glimpse into this distinctive work.  The unfathomable, indescribable wonder of the chemigram is on full display.  You can scrapbook this one for study later.

detail, Musigram

Douglas Collins has several chemigrams in the show as well, quite different in design and a far cry from the impeccable work of Cordier & Falk.  All were done earlier this year, mainly in the western Mexican state of Guerrero working under, let's say, simple conditions.  Using Foma FB paper outdoors under a tree, he produced this

Collins, Guerrero series #4, 2016

and this

Collins, Guerrero series #5, 2016

and this

Collins, Guerrero series #11, 2016

The quality of the light and of the water in rural Mexico can be expected to have had an effect, from subtle to determinative: the water was from an ancient well, and bore minerals from deep in the mountainside.  Here's some detail:

detail, Guerrero series #4

and again

detail, Guerrero series #11,

A poet once said that knowledge is like water, 'dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free.'  These pictures, relaxed and open, suffused with sun, unplanned and unforeseen, seem to partake in the joy of discovering profound secrets when one is least expecting them - or when, rather, one suspects they have been present all along.  

Or, according to Collins, they could express something else entirely, and that's okay with him too.

* * * *

Pierre Cordier and Gundi Falk will be seen at Galerie Volker Diehl (Berlin) in August and at Paris Photo/Scheublein + Bak (Paris/Zurich) in November.  Gundi Falk has a solo show underway at Barbado Gallery (Lisbon).  Collins has work currently on view at IPCNY (New York) and at the Center for Photographic Art (Carmel, California).

Why etched chemigrams?

Collins, etched chemigram 71914-5, 2014

This is a story about my journey from simple photogenic drawings to chemigams and finally to etched chemigrams - these latter have been mentioned a couple of times in the blog recently and have caused a small stir.  I hope this may be of interest to some of you.  Consider it a response.

I began making chemigrams - of a sort that didn't have a name - about ten years ago, on a day like this one in the middle of an endless summer when I was fiddling around with my trays in the darkroom, bored with books and friends, just looking to pass the time.  I knew nothing of the modern history of what I found myself doing and didn't care; in due course I would correct that, but for now I was simply lost at play.

I had seen, of course, a lot of abstract photography of the twentieth century, I was not naive.  Coburn, Moholy-Nagy, Bruguiere, Kepes, Hajek-Halke were on my shelf, and I was spending a fair amount of time making and thinking about glassprints, those black-and-white pictures created on transparent material and contact-printed under an enlarger which have recently figured in this blog - and will do so again.  And so it was that, like many before me, I stumbled onto the chemigram method by chance.  I didn't know even that it had rules and methods, predecessors, active giants in the field, a history; so in my ignorance I kept exploring it to its perceived limits and stopped, dazzled like an early explorer on the verge of some dark continent, and not a little scared too.

I researched it - surely someone must have come this way before.  Soon I found a man living in Belgium named Pierre Cordier who claimed to have invented chemigrams, or perhaps discovered them depending how inherent you believe chemigrams are to the world.  Incredibly, he'd been making chemigrams for half a century; it was he who had bestowed on them a name, created a doctrine of method, and was their most fervent apostle.  I climbed on a plane and was off to visit him.

Collins, etched chemigram 72814-2, 2014

In my suitcase I carried some chemigrams which I thought represented me and where I was at fairly well, but as a neophyte I wasn't sure I exactly wanted to show them to Cordier.  But he turned out to be the most generous, warm-hearted person imaginable and we quickly become great friends, chattering away days and nights about one thing or another concerning art and - yes - the rest of life (if there is any).  And I will say this: Pierre taught me a lot and I listened.  In due course I was making chemigrams strongly influenced by his teaching (much is contained in his book, The Chemigram, Editions Racine, Brussels, 2007) and this is still the method I use in my workshops - for me it remains the classic approach.

The use of resists as a first step was key, a major innovation that, as a printmaker and etcher, I grasped immediately.  The search for newer and better resists, or ones with special characteristics, began to consume me; tests were conducted, emails fired off, comparisons made; early posts to this blog in 2010 attest to that, and this endures as an important area of investigation.  Today, chemigramist Matt Higgins in Australia is at the forefront of that effort.

Other critical issues also occupied us.  How to plan the incisions that you make in the resist, which cut to make first, then second and so on, and which one to start off in fixer and which to start in developer - these become the subject of many trials and reappraisals.  Color on the other hand had evolved away from the fugacious tones of Cordier's great colorist period, the 70s and 80s.  The fleeting hues of dye coupling agents were no longer on the market, while the article by Dominic Man-Kit Lam and Bryant Rossiter in Scientific American (265, 80-85, 1991) taught us about the Mie effect on color refraction in crystals and showed the way to potassium hydroxide and sodium thiocyanate as enhanced or supercharged developers and fixers, giving us a new source of color.  No one told us we'd need a magician's wizardry to make them work, but they were still a possibility.  So for several years that's what I was doing - my version of Cordier's teaching, with a few tweaks added.

Collins, etched chemigram 71914-7, 2014

I suppose I peaked in this approach around 2011.  An example I still point to with stubborn pride is the untitled picture at the the top of the blogpost on lightfastness in chemigam colors from August of that year.  It has gone by various titles and been exhibited widely - I love saying that even if nothing I do is 'exhibited widely' - most notably at the Center for Photographic Art in California.  Click back and look at it.  You have the linearity that comes so effortlessly to chemigrams, the black lines, the white lines, the colored areas so easily controlled, the pastel-y choices leaning toward the cool; the clean finish, the modest amount of jumble to give it a rhythm.  Maybe not your cup of tea but not bad you must admit as planned execution.

And yet even then I was beginning to feel trapped by the very tools and approaches of the classic chemigram.  I wanted to break out from them, from the patterns, the motifs, the graphic tricks that come so readily to it, but I didn't know how.  Something was missing for me in chemigrams and I wasn't quite sure what that was - an authenticity maybe, a soul, or the mark of the hand as Rich would say.  In despair I began abusing the photographic paper, punching holes in it, burning it; I tried bleaches and acids.  Then in 2012 I went to Pittsburgh and learned the basics of mordançage.  It wasn't until I found that the old books called it bleach-etch, a name I liked better - more gutsy and literal - that I cautiously began trying it on chemigrams, stripping off the emulsion and basically trampling and desecrating it, then rebuilding it as an alternative face.  It's a daunting, unforgiving method, but in these pictures I'm showing you today - pictures both pristine and devastated - I began to see some of the pain and beauty I had sought.  Chris Anderson came by the studio, saw them too, and dubbed them simply 'etched chemigrams'.  Then she did some herself.

Collins, etched chemigram 10715-3, 2015

Collins, etched chemigram 91714-3, 2014

Collins, etched chemigram 93014-1, 2014

The chemigram is not gone but on the contrary stands at the center of this enterprise, if only as the house into which we go to destroy it.  Without it as point of departure, or better yet without the belief the chemigram is founded upon, namely that paper and gelatin and silver salts must be reckoned with at the most intimate level if we are ever going to make a true picture, we wouldn't have a chance.

There exist other pathways from the rigors of the chemigram, this is just one.  You will find the others on your own.

Douglas Collins

From zombie prints to Lazarus prints

Turnbull, untitled chemigram with additions #1, 2011-15

We've talked a lot about living prints - lumens, pinholes, mordançages, chemigrams - but let's talk now about death and about prints that no longer breathe.

What are dead prints?  We've all seen them, we'd be lying to say we haven't.  A dead print is one that is damaged beyond repair, either by something the artist did herself in creating it - an experiment gone awry, an idea that didn't pan out, a flat-out screw-up - or by an extrinsic act.  Take your pick of these: maybe someone spilled coffee on it, or ripped it accidentally, or got it caught in a door, or they drove a spike through it.  Whatever the case, these prints are off life support.  In the trade (you may have encountered this), dead prints are also known as zombie prints, because in art nothing ever really dies, though there is little argument there are times when it should.

This raises the question, what do you do with them?  You can't get rid of them, after all they're zombies.  They will pile up and crowd around you and haunt you forever.  They will never let you forget them.  To provide an answer, Rich Turnbull has invoked the notion of the Lazarus print, a sort of antidote to the zombie print.  The Lazarus print, like its namesake, is a kind of do-over, a second chance, or what I believe they call in golf a mulligan.  Here's how it works.  You take the zombie, lay it on the table, stare real hard at it, and then start drawing on it.  Simple as that.  You are breathing life into it as you draw.  Soon, the print stirs and awakens.  It lives.

Turnbull, untitled chemigram with additions #2, 2011-15

There are several tips to keep in mind.  One is don't get too serious about what you're doing.  Normally a staid, thoughtful individual, Rich proves that point unequivocably in untitled chemigram with additions #2.  If you make a mistake, well, it's already dead anyway.  And you'll be surprised that the more relaxed you are in applying ink or paint, the zanier your moves, then the more life you find you're pumping into it, because life really responds to zany.  Here Rich's piece has been quickly revivified and would now look commanding framed on a wall.  Back in 2011 it didn't look so good.

Another tip, don't limit yourself to drawing.  Consider painting, spraying, tearing, collaging, fouling, burning or any activity that comes to mind: nothing is illegal, feel free as a child.  Each activity is as powerful as another in restoring life.  It was after four days that Jesus, in the Book of John, brought Lazarus back from the dead.  He used faith.  Rich used marker pens after four years.  Each is effective.

The critical reader may have noticed that the same errant tool that 'accidentally' led to the zombification of the print earlier may equally, and paradoxically, lead to its restoration as a Lazarus today.  This is true, and is one of the great paradoxes of art.  

Turnbull, untitled chemigram with additions #3, 2010-15

 
Another may ask, is this the same thing as hybrid art, where different artistic approaches are combined in a single work?  Well, yes and no.  Often it's a matter of intention versus nonchalance or desperation.  The results may look the same but it's really all about how you get there, and what you learn along the way.  Here's a well-known Saul Steinberg photograph/drawing hybrid recently shown at the Pace Gallery in New York:

Steinberg, Girl in Bathtub, 1949

Clearly, this was conceived in advance as a hybrid, and in fact it's from this that it derives all its charm: neither photo nor drawing can stand on its own.  On the other hand, from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, here's a Pierre Cordier chemigram that plays with ambiguous possibilities and suggestiveness.  Are those dark lines around the major shapes laid down after the fact, with a non-chemigramic tool such as a brush or pen?  Very hard to tell.

Cordier, 6/7/81 III, Homage to Robert Capa, 1981

To qualify properly as a Lazarus print a work must have been judged dead by its creator before the Lazarus intervention, and neither the Steinberg nor the Cordier come close to that - happily for us.  Yes, there is an element of devil-may-care desperation in the Lazarus project.  When it succeeds, though, it is all the more wonderful for it.  Turnbull's recent trio of works clinches the case.

 

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Leonar-Leigrano photographic paper, R.I.P.?

Cordier, Chemigram 28.8.76 III, 1976.  Private collection courtesy Gitterman Gallery

In the years prior to WW II, many of the most popular papers in Europe came out of the Leonar Werke AG, whose main plant was in the Wandsbek area of Hamburg.  The papers had special qualities and features to appeal to both amateur and professional alike, and brand names like Rano, Lumarto, Imago and Leigrano each gained wide followings.  Our interest today lies with Leigrano, if only because that was the paper of choice of Pierre Cordier after his invention of the chemigram in 1956.  The chemigram above is an example of a work done on Leigrano.  Leigrano 111 hard, to be precise, expiration date unknown.

Pre-WWI view of Leonar

Camera construction section ca. 1914

The Leonar firm had begun in 1893 as a partnership of a chemist and a merchant, manufacturing and selling photographic chemicals.  Soon the partners expanded into printing-out (POP) papers, popular at the time, and to the production of cameras: their first developing-out paper wasn't made until 1907.  Led by strong research and engineering, Leonar by the 1920s was able to introduce new types of paper coatings and emulsions to the industry, which helped establish it as a major player in most aspects of photographic developing and printing.  It introduced mass production methods to its factories and expanded its markets.  In 1932 it went public.

Leonar in the 1930s

Rolls of finished paper awaiting shipment

In 1943 Leonar was heavily bombed by the British and the Americans.  In the postwar years the firm rebuilt and modernized its operations (let no disaster go wasted).  Certain lines were discontinued, others given prominence.  Leigrano was singled out and seen to be a paper remarkable in its versatility, rich in silver, with a cool-tone bromide look in most developing agents; it had become popular with photographers of all types - in the street, in portraits, in the fine arts.  It's probably not an exageration to say that every German photographer in the postwar period used Leigrano at least in part, and that includes names like Otto Steinert, the Bechers, Hajek-Halke and Chargesheimer.  Not to mention the Swiss, French, Belgians and Austrians.

Leonar papers.  Note the interesting stains on the middle one.

But good things come to an end.  In 1964 Leonar was merged with Agfa, then owned by Bayer, which in turn merged with the Antwerp-based firm of Gevaert - the sort of corporate mischief so common in the history of photography, even to this day.  The separate identity of Leonar was allowed to disappear.  By the mid 1970s it had suspended operations entirely.  Requiescat in pace.

Yet somehow, like a revenant, it lingers with us, not only in memory and imagination but also tangibly in people's attics and cellars, for the Leigrano secondary market, despite the odds, is alive and well - when you can find it.  Just ask Wolfgang Moersch, the prominent fine arts photochemical manufacturer, inventor of ECO 4812.  When someone not long ago spoke to him of Leonar-Leigrano he said simply, "The very name melts on your tongue."  Michael Hummel recently brought to my attention a photostream on Flickr devoted mostly to lith printing that is chock full of outstanding examples of prints on long-expired Leigrano.

I've now entered the fray myself.  Last month I acquired some Leigrano from the descendant of a German prisoner-of-war interned in Alberta, Canada; he wanted to sell me his canteen and some medals too but I carefully declined.  Here's an etched chemigram I made from a sheet of it, Leonar-Leigrano 2a, expiration ca. 1945.

Collins, untitled etched chemigram, 2014

 I expect we haven't seen the end of Leigrano.

Cordier in San Francisco

Cordier, 21/4/72 I  after a computer drawing of Manfred Mohr, 1972

The Haines Gallery of San Francisco has mounted a geometry-flavored show entitled "Poetics of Construction" featuring Pierre Cordier, Ai Weiwei, Andy Goldsworthy, and the amazing Monir Farmanfarmaian, among others.  The objects in this show - and most are indeed objects, with a sculptural physicality evident or implicit - have a brooding presence and seem to rest comfortably, even authoritatively, in their appointed space.  Cordier's chemigrams from 1972 fit in nicely with this concept.  Back then, he had just begun to collaborate with Manfred Mohr, the computer art pioneer, who was fresh from exhibiting his first computer-plotted drawings at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.  For Cordier, this was to mark the beginning of a 20-year preoccupation with grids, graphs, and glyphs in some of their more austere forms, mollified perhaps by the chemigramic filter; only since the millenium has the hold of this spell on him begun to ease.  The works shown at the Haines reflect the early stages of that collaboration.

Cordier, 22/4/72 I  after a computer drawing of Manfred Mohr, 1972

The titles refer to the dates of execution and are written in Romance-language style with day, month, year in that order.  So that these two pictures were done on Friday and Saturday, the 21st and 22nd of April 1972.  Why are these dates interesting?

On that very Friday, while Cordier was bent over his darkroom trays, the Apollo 16 spaceship landed on the moon, in an unexplored region called the Descartes Highlands.  Astronauts climbed out, stumbled around in that strange gravity, collected rock samples, took snapshots of each other, saluted the earth and climbed back in.  Cordier was just finishing the first picture.  The following day - Saturday - one of the largest housing projects in America was intentionally demolished by the government because the tenants refused to live in it any longer: they had said they were treated like rats and it was intolerable.  That was Pruitt Igoe, in St Louis, and the documenting of its demolition, which was unprecedented, became one of the iconic moments in the film Koyaanisqatsi (Life Out Of Joint, in the Hopi language) by Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass.  Cordier meanwhile was just completing the second.  In the brief space of a day, a monstrous tension between life as it is and life as it might have to be, or become.  In my mind this tension drifts over and envelopes Cordier in his studio, he unaware yet somehow understanding.  His marks are faint but made with a firm and serene hand, his voice no more than a whisper, I see his lips barely moving.  He has been given to record the allegory.  I exagerate but then I do not.

Apollo 16, Moon, near the Descartes Crater, 1972

Pruitt Igoe, St Louis, 1972

The Cordier works on display are c-prints from the chemigram original, printed in editions of 12.  The show runs until March 9, 2013.

Nolan Preece talks about his work - part II

(We published the first installment in December 2011.  His website is www.nolanpreece.com)

Preece, Chemical Nuptials (on Velox), 1987

After my MFA was finished, I started working for an environmental consulting company doing photography for the White River Oil Shale Corp in eastern Utah in 1981.  I had lots of time to play with chemistry between field excursions.  I wanted something that I could selectively control to alter the image, create color, and which was archival.  I found an old DuPont toning formula that called for thiourea and a strong base such as sodium carbonate and on b&w photo paper it could be toned in gold toner to achieve a range of colors.  My only problem was the application of the chemicals.  I experimented and finally came up with salt and pepper shakers as the tool to sprinkle thiourea and Red Devil lye into unfixed areas of the print. 

Preece, Contact Zone (on Velox), 1987

My next problem was the expense of the amount of gold that is in one of the old gold toning formulas.  I decided to try GP1 which is a gold protective solution without much gold in it.  At first it didn't look like it would change the ugly olive drab and brown color of the thiourea stain but then as I left it in longer, even overnight, bright colors began to appear.  I could also doctor it a bit with an eye dropper loaded with liquid gold chloride.  This process produced a two-fold effect: 1) I was getting a nice cool/warm contrast between any printed image or one created by using a weak solution of Dektol and the warm colors of the thiourea stain.  2) The image, as far as I can tell, is very archival, having been soaked in gold chloride.  By the way, the print should be fixed and washed to archival standards before gold treatment and well washed afterward.  Outdated b&w photo paper makes great chemigrams this way when working without a printed image under room light.  However, if an image is printed with an enlarger it should be painted with fixer before returning to room light.

Preece, Chemical Incubator - Homage to Pierre Cordier, 2011

More recently I've been experimenting with a version of the chemigram developed by Pierre Cordier.  We have been using acrylic substances for grounding copper plates for some time.  Future Floor Polish is one of them.  I decided to try this substance on outdated b&w photo paper.  The results were astounding!  Acrylics break down when placed in alkaline solutions, so as the Dektol or D72 (I mix my own from scratch) breaks down the Future on the surface of the print, it penetrates, creeps and dissolves the Future, leaving a variety of effects.  I have yet to fully explore this phenomenon.  I suspect there are many different types of acrylic applications that my work.

Preece, Chemical Dollops, 2011

 

 

Pierre Cordier sends his New Year's greetings

Cordier, Chemigram 1/9/11 II "Squares in Love"

Douglas Collins, inventor of this nonfigurative blog, has offered me the opportunity to wish his readers a Happy New Year.  Happily I accept: this blog is heaven-sent for all of us who practice or appreciate alternative or extraphotographic experimentation.  The texts are clear, carefully documented, the illustrations well chosen.  To my knowledge, in the world of such things, it stands alone.

For my participation in this first post of 2012, I've gone into my recent chemigrams and picked out three pairs of squares, each measuring just a centimeter on a side.  They have had intimate relations, a rare event among squares.  Presenting geometric forms with humor is the specialty of a French artist I much admire, François Morellet.

These "Squares in Love" are not as sharp and clean as the ones I used to make.  Let me explain.  On my website some of you may have seen the Chemigram 12/1/82 "Zigzagram".  It's a completely controlled work, except for three tiny imperfections cause by spots of dust in the 'magical varnish' I employ as a resist.  Some people tease me by saying, "But those are my favorite shapes!"

Cordier, Chemigram 12/1/82 "Zigzagram", detail

The other chemigram I'd take to a desert island (but what good would they do me there?) is the Photo-Chemigram 4/4/79 "Hexagram".  The fine lines you see in it are disturbed by numerous bubbles, dust and defects in the varnish, like a stream crashing among rocks.  Without these imperfections this image could have been made on a computer, which would have had no interest for me.  So I welcome the random effects of matter and materials, but one has to know whether to accept or reject them.

Cordier, Photo-Chemigram 4/4/79 "Hexagram", detail

At the same time, I now accept that certain shapes be blurrier or more hazy than in my previous work.  That suggests depth.

And if even squares can fall in love, why not imitate them during the new year?  So I make a further wish: that all of you create new images with every alternative technique, both possible and imaginable.

Cordierly yours,

Pierre

www.pierrecordier.com

Chemigram shows for rest of the year, including some you'll have to travel to

Man-Kit Lam, 2005

For those with a yen for travel, we've gathered a few shows you may want to catch before the year is out.  All include chemigrams either solely or in part or, in Ms Rossiter's case, include what might be called a chemigramic inflection - and for that reason alone they're all worth seeing, besides the utter beauty and mystery of them.  If we've missed your show, please post a comment and we'll fix it.

Pierre Cordier 
Paris Photo, HackelBury Gallery, November 10-13, 2011, Grand Palais, Paris, France

Dominic Man-Kit Lam
Ink Art: a world without rules, September 2011 & February 2012, Novel Plaza, 128 West Nanjing Road, Shanghai, China

Alison Rossiter
Art Platform LA, Yossi Milo Gallery, October 1-3, 2011, LA Mart, Los Angeles, California, USA

Alison Rossiter
Paris Photo, Stephen Bulger Gallery, November 10-13, 2011, Grand Palais, Paris, France

Edward Mapplethorpe
The Variations, October 5 - November 12, 2011, Dubner Moderne, rue du Grand-Chêne 6, Lausanne, Switzerland

Norman Sarachek
Emerging Artists Annual Showcase, November 4, 2011, Allure West Studios, 15 E State St, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, USA

Matthew Higgins
Pingyao International Photography Festival, September 1 - September 30, 2011, Pingyao, Shanxi Province, China

Nolan Preece
Continuitive: Connections Between Parallel Directions, Dec 2011 - January 2012, Truckee Meadows Community College, 7000 Dandini Blvd, Reno, NV, USA

Douglas Collins
New Prints 2011 Selected by Trenton Doyle Hancock, October 3, 2011 - March 28, 2012, Pfizer Corporation, 235 E 42 St, New York, New York, USA

just closed:

Dominic Man-Kit Lam
Sino-French Exhibition of Art Exchange, September 20-22, 2011, National Library Exhibition Center, Beijing, China

Nolan Preece
Xhibit, May 13 to August 27, 2011, Preston Contemporary Art Center, 1755 Avenida del Mercado, Mesilla, New Mexico, USA

Installation view at HackelBury

When the Pierre Cordier show opened recently at the HackelBury Gallery in London, I blogged it and posted a group of pictures from among my many favorites in Cordier's work.  What I neglected to do was give a sense of the space the pictures were shown in, so here it is, an installation view of the main room as you enter.

If there is such a thing as a warm formalism, this must be it: impeccable framing, tasteful lighting, a procession of compact, powerful pictures drawing the eye toward the early evening sky above Launceston Place, an outline of clay chimneypots against deepening blue.  No bombast here, no cries, no shouts.