What are several good methods of mounting black and white prints for exibition.

-- dave cole (dcole@cetlink.net), March 17, 2000

Answers

Paste them to the walls.

Paste them to the outside of the gallery windows, facing inwards.

Paste them to the ceiling.

Wrap them around a bunch of people, like a number of columns, and get them to walk around.

Cut them into little squares, and paste them to beer mats.

Sorry, it must be one of those days. You might prefer the traditional way, which involves a mat (i.e. mount board with a hole), glass and a frame.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan@snibgo.com), March 17, 2000.

Woohoo! Alan had some good ones there... On the way to all this, conventional mounting of normal size prints usually involves dry-mounting the print to a high-quality acid-free "rag board" (super-duper cardboard). If an overmat is used, then sometimes the print is attached with "photo corners"- little triangular tape thingies. In an exhibition, you will see that these have been carefully positioned to look right, and an overmat is made to go between the print and the glass in the frame. Most basic photo texts will start you off, a course might be better.

To get back in the spirit of things - go to some galleries and LOOK :D.... some of the stuff is right pretty!

-- Paul Harris (pharris@neosoft.com), March 17, 2000.

Print them on a t-shirt and wear it to the exhibition.

[Sorry, but this is contagious]

-- Alec (alecj@bellsouth.net), March 18, 2000.

I use archival photo corners rather than dry mounting.

-- Peter Hughes (leo948@yahoo.com), March 19, 2000.

i realize none of us has given really good advice here, dave. this has been discussed several times before, so you might want to look down through the listing of questions for a previous discussion.

in short, there are two basic theories of mounting: 1. dry mounting, which i don't like because it's non-reversible, and 2. museum-style linen-tape mounting, which is what i do.

briefly, use acid-free mounting board for black and white prints. take two sheets. in one sheet, cut a window in whatever size you want. this will be your front mat. using linen tape--available at a photography or art-supply store--hinge the print to the top of the window on the back-side of the mat, so that your image faces outward and is aligned properly. now take the second mat and hinge it to the first along one edge in much the same way. close it up so that the second, windowless mat holds the print flat against the front. voila.

now frame and display.

-- brad daly (bwdaly@hiwaay.net), March 19, 2000.