Mounting Photos

[cp]

i am now searching for info of mounting pics myself. previously i let others mounting the photos for me, but it's very very expensive . questions:1/does foamboard suitable ?being acidfree? durable? 2/ i tried once with the UHU Stic Glue Sticks , it claimed it's acid free , is i t a good choice?actually i found it' s easy to mount a 16x20 inches photos by gl ue stick.:) 3/ any archival grade glue stick? 4/how can i mount up the photos on a frame,so that i can hang it up? thanks

[domenicco]

Hi Benz, I have been mounting photos for years, I have used dry mounting ,but never really liked it. Then i discovered an acid free glue that it was sold with an applicator, it is called Rollataq. I have used it for years. But now i have discovered The " Columbus egg" All i do is to tape my prints to an acid free board, you can use mattboard, with acid free tape,( artist tape). and this way you don't damage the print and protect it by any chemical either glue or drymount.. After that i just cover it with the mattboard. It works great for me

[Andre Noble]

benz, i wood lik 2 help u. but are u ser-ee us? glu-stics?

But seriously, you should consider searching the archives here under printing ang exhibiting, and also purchasing a book on the subject of mounting, matting, and framing because there are permanence and technique issues that go beyond the replies you'll get here.

[Huib]

Benz,

Don't know in which part of the world you are living, but here in the Netherlands you can buy a product called 'Scanstick'. It is acid free cardboard, coated with an acid free glue. Dimension are 1mtrx0.7mtr and costs about 6 to 8 Euro. Use is simple: cut roughly the size you need, peel away the protective sheet and with the help of a cotton cloth mount the picture by carefully pressing it from one side to the other side on the mountingboard. Then trim it to the final dimension.

If you print on fiber, you need then to make them as flat as possible. I air dry my fiber prints on a waterproof board (or glass) by taping the print to the board with aquarell tape and let it dry overnight. Fiber prints dryed this way are flat enough to be mounted the next day. If I need to spot the print I leave them taped to the board, spot them, and then hold the print above a watercooker so the steam moistens the print and the spotting is no more so obvious when you look at a sharp angle over the surface of the print. After this let I dry again before you mount the picture.

Huib.

[Per Volquartz]

2 ways:

1. Dry mount your images. After drying your prints on window screens (DONT USE A FERRO TYPE dryer = contamination), flatten your prints (and drive out moisture) by placing the print between over sized museum mount board in a dry mount press. After that cool down the prints under weights (books or enameled steel sheets made for this purpose).

Dry mount the prints unto double weight archival museum board (try Light Impressions in Rochester, NY for archival supplies). When you dry mount always place a sheet of silicone "release paper" between the print and the over sized board (not the board you are mounting your print on).

2. Use archival tape w. rice starch. A fair number of archival experts do not like photos to be dry mounted. Their reason being that if something goes wrong with the print at a later time it is difficult to correct if the print is permanently mounted. Their recommendation is to mount the prints on the archival backing using archival tape (made from rice starch) - you do not trim your print. Instead you attach a piece of archival tape to each corner of the print (+ in the middle / height / length if large print) This way the print can easily be removed...

[pudge]

I quite agree this is not a subject that can be adequately covered here, but particularly want to echo the point that, according to today's conservation standards (which are changing all the time) no mounting technique that permanently alters the photograph is recommended--though I realize many photographers still dry-mount, and excellent materials exist for this. (Michael Smith's site even argues that properly dry-mounted photographs may last longer. Regardless, he's found a new type of board worth investigating--see http://www.superiorarchivalmats.com/) Unless you're using top quality board and storing it carefully, though, you're likely to face the spectacle I just did when curating a show of beautiful bromoil prints from the 'teens through 'forties: the prints in this quite permanent process (in which silver is replaced with ink) are outlasting their mats, sometimes even their paper subsrates. The crummy posterboard to which many were pasted down (with no help from the likes of Light Impressions, believe me) were crumbling in more than a few cases, and taking the prints with them. Imagine what your print will look like when that acid-free foam core is battered and bruised, then look into the many cheap and easy techniques of hinging onto acid-free boards.

[John Elder]

Corner mount the print! Then tape the 4 corner mounts with acid free tape, not touching the print. The print is both firmly mounted, protected, and can easily be removed if desired.

[james mickelson]

I prefer to drymount my prints as do many photographers. You need look no farther than a good photography gallery or shows such as Sothebys or Cristys. Most of the photographs are dry mounted. It makes a better presentation too. I hate looking at print that is wavey. If you are serious about your prints then protect them by dry mounting them. Yes Michael Smith has found a mattboard which is supposed to be more archival than many other materioals. But I look at prints by Adams and others which are getting to be pretty old and they look good to me. The chances of your mat or mount board getting damaged without damaging your print, given proper care and handling, are remote. I have used 3M's repositional paper adhesive on many of my prints when a dry mount press has been unavailable and for 10 years there is no problem with it. And my display environment isn't the best. Lots of direct sunlight an hour or two a day with no problems. If you don't care about wavey prints then go for the binders tape and a hinged overmatt.

[Ben Hopson]

Using hinged matts works well. Just tape print to matt with acid free tape and hang or frame. The matt keeps glass from contacting the print. Check this site for some of the matt and mount materials available. I am not affilliated with them, it is simply the only web source I am familiar with. http://www.lightimpressionsdirect.com/servlet/OnlineShopping

Good luck, Ben

[Wayne_6692]

One technique that I haven't heard discussed recently is dry-mounting the print back-to-back with another processed sheet. This seals the back and will help resist bending by balancing the effects of moisture absorption. Then the print is hung with tape. Anyone have experience with this?

[Juliet Rake]

Other than tape, which leaves a residue and photocorners, which can be awkward to position properly, there is another product that is useful if you wish for the print to be removeable from its backing. Lineco makes a product called "archival mounting strips". You use them as tabs around the edges of the print. They are particularly useful for prints made on heavy paper such as watercolor paper and are good for conservation quality mounts.

[scott_6029]

Dry mount. Used to use tape. perhaps ok with heavy double weight paper. But, for single weight, dry mount looks a LOT better. You pretty much need a dry mount press to get prints flat anyway.....so why not dry mount? They last pretty darn long dry mounted. And if they need to fix a print....a) is your print THAT important. b) if it is, well then certainly they are fixing dry mounted prints today, maybe at more cost, but again, if its THAT valuable....

It's a pretty easy technique to learn. And, I think you will appreciate it in the long run.

[Scott Davis]

the simplest, most cost-effective, and least harmful means of mounting your prints is to hinge-mount them with a water-soluble paste adhesive and linen tape to an acid-free backing board (can be foamcore, can be another piece of mat board), and then overmat to protect the print. While drymount can make for a nice presentation, it is very difficult to reverse, if not impossible, without damaging the print. If you're going to take the care and effort to make a fine print, even if you think in 100 years it will sell for less than you paid for it in materials costs, why not mount it to the proper museum standard in the first place?

As to flattening prints, I have very little problem with print curl anymore now that I have fiberglass drying screens and can air-dry my fiber prints over night. A little curl is natural to photo paper, even straight out of the factory. If you don't own a drymount press and don't want to invest the square footage of your house and the hundreds of dollars it requires to get and keep one, you can always put a (smaller) print inside a white cotton t-shirt, and then press it with a steam iron on low heat, ironing from the back.

[Jim Jones]

The cost of a second-hand dry mount press was a fraction of the cost of the dry mount tissue I've consumed over the years. Unlike some pressure sensitive material I tred long ago, dry mounting has been perfectly reliable. Using acid free 100% rag board should forestall attention from conservators, if anyone really cares by then. Perhaps mounting with more concern for future conservation than for appearance is better in some markets. It's a choice each of us has to make for ourselves.

[Jerzy Pawlowski]

Dry mount. A print can look nice and flat in my place but after moving it to another place it may be wavy due to different moisture in the air.

[Tim Hyde]

I'm struggling with this right now. Even with a good sturdy paper, such as Museo Silver Rag, you are taking chances by corner mounting or top stitching a print in excess of 20x24, and you are almost certain to eventually get ripples or waves when you get to 30x40 and above. And have you ever tried to dry mount a 40x50? Most of the big color these days is mounted on plexi, aluminum or a new composite called Dibond. You can either print with a large white border, mount it to the backing, then frame with a riser to offset the glass from the image, or use a traditional mat over the mounted print. More and more, the big color guys are doing the former--i.e., using a riser and no mat.

I have discovered that many large metro areas have mounting shops of one sort or another, and the process isn't all that expensive. You can ask around at fine-art galleries to find such mounter in your area.

[Michael Graves]

I'm only just now starting to get any "keepers" that I think are good enough for display, and that aren't knockoffs of other work I liked. The early work just plain sucks. When i started refining my technique to the point the print quality was decent enough for display, everything looked like Walker Evans Wannabe Imitations. This past year, I started to get some stuff that I felt were "my" images. I decided on dry mounting based on everything I read. My logical side tells me that 100 years from now, when the dry mounted prints are decaying in their mounts, nobody's really going to give a s...care, that is.

My ego, on the other hand, insists that I'll be a posthumous discovery, so naturally my work will be in tremendous demand. The museum that discovers the Light Impressions boxes with the flattened but unmounted prints that I have stored on a wire shelf will be ecstatic.

That's assuming, of course, that my kids don't just figure its easier to just throw away all of Dad's old photography crap when he's gone.

[alec4444]

I've been drymounting with Adorama's back board and universal dry mount tissue. I never was able to determine why Seal's mount tissue was 4x the price. I used to be a big fan of the double weight mount boards Adorama sells, until I determined that in a frame the single weight was just fine.

My impression was that mount tissue is heat-reversable... why is remounting it in the future a problem?

--A

[jshanesy]

One reason I always dry mount is aesthetic and not merely technical. The windows in my overmats are cut larger than the print size so that I can float the picture within it. The overmat may never intrude upon the borders of my prints, not even a millimeter's worth. If I were to corner mount or use tape the overmat would help keep the print flat, but then it wouldn't be my print anymore.

I've recently seen some otherwise fine presentations of photographs ruined by fact that no matter what you do, if a print is not dry mounted it won't be perfectly flat. You can still see the occasional wave or crinkle underneath the mat and it makes all the difference in the world as to the final presentation.

As far as I'm concerned, if a photograph is not dry mounted and overmatted it is not finished.

[Michael Kadillak]

As far as I'm concerned, if a photograph is not dry mounted and overmatted it is not finished.

Could not agree more with you Jim. I would add that using the best materials in the process with cotton rag PH balanced mat board and highest quality mounting tissue is a must. THere is a reason that Seal is more expensive - it works. When corners are cut in this regard, problems will result.

Cheers!

[alec4444]

THere is a reason that Seal is more expensive - it works. When corners are cut in this regard, problems will result.

Proven or speculative? I ask because I've only used Adorama's tissue for a few years. If you've seen it fail, do you know how long it took?

--A

[vinny]

As far as I'm concerned, if a photograph is not dry mounted and overmatted it is not finished.[/QUOTE]

I agree also. I've seen quite a few shows the last few years and nothing is more distracting than a wavy print. They look like unfinished work. Everything i've seen lately has been dry mounted or mounted directly to gatorfoam without glass. I wouldn't be happy selling someone a mounted and matted print if it wasn't try mounted.

vinny

[tim atherton]

Bear in mind that dry mounting is generally not considered to meet archival standards for photographic preservation. (for example, the LoC advises against it, and I still believe it is not acceptable under the HABS/HAER standards?) Any institutions which are taking photographs with an eye towards long term preservation won't recommend dry mounting.

[Stephen Willard]

I had a gallery sell 10 of my prints to a hospital about 5 years ago. They were all mounted using tape, and everyone of them separated from the tape and fell down into the mat. Personally, I have no confidence in tape. Every tape I have used for every application imaginable has failed over time, and this is why electrical code will not let electricians use tape for connecting wire.

I have also used dry mount presses, and they are expensive to buy, take up a lot of space, and are very time consuming to use. I have been using a photo spray adhesive made by 3M with excellent results. I have prints mounted with spray adhesive that are over 10 years old with no signs of failure or impact on the photograph. I use a cloths pin to hold the print on one side while position the other side of the print on the foam board. I then role it flat with a fair amount of pressure. I can mount a print in less then one minute, and I have mounted prints as large as 20x50 and 30x40 using spray adhesives.

I only use acid free foam board for mounting. Foam board is dimensionally the most stable material, and I have never had any prints damaged from foam board expansion or contraction especially the big prints. Foam board is also less likely to warp and pull away from the glass creating gaps between the prints and the border mat.

A lot of people frown upon spray adhesives, but lets face it, glue is glue no matter whether you dry mount or wet mount.

[jackies]

I was devastated in my first show - I had mounted my photos with archival tape on archival board. They looked fine in my home. Then the moisture was different in the show area and they all became wavy and looked HORRID. Needless to say I didn't sell much.

Now I dry mount or use PMA adhesive sheets and have a much better presentation. I never have used the spray adhesive but will probably try it on prints that exceed the capacity of my dry mount press if I ever try printing larger, or will give it to a local frame shop to do it.

Jackie

[Michael Kadillak]

Proven or speculative? I ask because I've only used Adorama's tissue for a few years. If you've seen it fail, do you know how long it took?

--A

The failure I was making reference to was not failure as a function of time but the fact that other tissues were not as "even" on the print surface coming out of the press almost as though the mounting tissue was not 100% uniform from corner to corner. The larger the print, the greater the potential issues at hand.

I never had this problem with Seal tissue as the product appears to have marvelous quality control and just works as intended. Michael A. Smith has a saying that I believe has an application in this context - "I make the best prints I can." The subtitle here is that one should use the best materials possible. If your current mounting technique or product works, then use it.

Cheers!

[wedgeland]

I can mount a print in less then one minute, and I have mounted prints as large as 20x50 and 30x40 using spray adhesives.

Might you give a few more details to this process? I have 36 x 36 prints that I need to mount. What brand of spray-mount did you use? Any specifics to the technique? How do you burnish such a large print nice and smooth without any air-bubbles, etc...

Also, anyone know of any businesses in the Washington DC metro area that does print mounting? I'm having a hard time finding a place, but I've been told that they're around here...

Thanks...

[Tim Hyde]

Also, anyone know of any businesses in the Washington DC metro area that does print mounting? I'm having a hard time finding a place, but I've been told that they're around here...
Thanks...

Yes, there are several. Call Chrome in Georgetown to get the best recommendation. I prefer Lamount in NYC but they are a bit more expensive.

[RichardRitter]

As far as I'm concerned, if a photograph is not dry mounted and overmatted it is not finished.



As a collector of prints I prefer that the prints be unmounted, signed and dated on the back of the print in pencil by the maker. Once the mounting board is danged the value of the print goes down and it is very hard to remount prints.

I sell all my work in corners. If you the buyer wants to dry mount it, its your to do what you want it.

[keith english]

I assume we are talking silver gel prints. I don't believe you can heat mount any ink-jet print, correct?

[bignegs]

I assume we are talking silver gel prints. I don't believe you can heat mount any ink-jet print, correct?

I asked Ilford about this and they definitely advise against dry mounting of any ink jet prints.The response from their tech support:

"ILFORD stopped using dry mounting tissue inhouse > 12 years ago and we do not suggest using hot mount and flat bed presses for any inkjet media types. Please ensure that you only use mounting products designed for Inkjet use. Spray mounts today or pressure sensitive adhesive films are the ones normally suggest for ink jet. Most good suppliers can supply those mounting adhesives designed for inkjet applications. If you do need to use hot mount products then please ensure you use the low temperature versions specifcially designed for inkjet."

AFAIK, photography is unique in having a tradition of permanently attaching a print to a mount. No one would dream of using such techniques for other forms of valuable art (prints/watercolors/etc.), and AFAIK it is not considered conservation mounting these days.

The material that you mount to also needs to be considered - standard foamcore, acid free or not, tends not to remain flat. I have 20X24 pieces that were mounted with spray adhesive to 1/8" foamcore that within a year warped and bowed badly. Maybe a heavier foamcore, or an alternative material is needed - I will never do that again! There is discussion of this on other boards, with the consensus being that foamcore is likely to warp, the thinner, the more likely.

Never easy, eh?

Jaan

[Jim Ewins]

I munt inkjets with a drymount press and too often have warp, which I seldom get using Scotch 568 Positionable Mounting adhesive. I got a 16" roll that works well. I need a spry booth to use the can stuff.

[deug]

I urgently need some informed advice on mounting/framing. I'm having a show at a local gallery. We put the show up last night. I was in the gallery again this afternoon, and was quite alarmed to see that several of the prints had big splotches of condensation on the inside of the glass, enough that drips of water were running down the glass on a couple of them. Additionally, a couple of the prints were buckling in several places on the mounting board.

Please note that the gallery has large front windows, and all of the affected prints were being directly hit by late afternoon sun (I know that this is not good for fading, but there's no way around it). The prints are all on Epson Enhanced Matte, and were mounted on acid-free mat board. The guy who did the framing said that the prints could not be dry-mounted because of being printed on matte paper, so they had to be "spray-mounted"(?).

I'm certain that the prints were not exposed to water after I picked them up from the framer - I transported them directly to the gallery space and they were stored in a dry location until being hung. I don't know anything about mounting prints, but it seems to me that the condensation must have something to do with the mounting process, and the fact that the prints were heated by the sun. I'm in Vancouver, and it's late October, so we're not talking about intense heat, but I can't see how any other explanation makes sense. The framer however, said there is no way it could have anything to do with the mounting.

He has offered to fix up all the affected prints (remount the affected ones and clean out the condensation). I need to figure something out by the morning. If, as I suspect, it's a problem with the mounting then I don't see any solution other than having all the prints removed from the mounting board and placed in mats instead. I would rather not do this, it will be another expense, and it is not the way I wanted to present the prints, but I don't want to take a chance on further problems. I greatly appreciate any informed advice on this.

[Ben Chase]

2 ways:


2. Use archival tape w. rice starch. A fair number of archival experts do not like photos to be dry mounted. Their reason being that if something goes wrong with the print at a later time it is difficult to correct if the print is permanently mounted. Their recommendation is to mount the prints on the archival backing using archival tape (made from rice starch) - you do not trim your print. Instead you attach a piece of archival tape to each corner of the print (+ in the middle / height / length if large print) This way the print can easily be removed...

I highly recommend this way. T-hinge with all archival materials.
Here is a link to the library of Congress as to how they mount all of their archival materials:
http://www.loc.gov/preserv/care/mat.html