Mounting Photographs

One you might remember from a while back - the steps leading down to the little beach by the Portrush Arcadia:

Steps and shadows, 'Blad, HP5+, ID-11, lith, Foma paper.

The new thing is the mount.  Having done very little in this area until relatively recently I acquired a Dry Mount Press from one of the older members of our little Photographic Club who no longer used it.  These are extremely heavy things, fairly simple in operation - although the actual process takes a bit of fiddling about. Years ago these were all the rage but recently they've fallen a little out of favour with the 'Fine Art Photographers' as once the photograph is mounted onto the mount card, it's not un-mountable.  These days a lot of people working in this area seem to prefer using Photo Corners which allow the print to be easily taken out and put somewhere else should the need arise.  From what I read, the one advantage the dry-mount press still has over other methods of mounting (and it's a big advantage) is that it mounts your fibre prints flat - really flat, without wrinkles or curl.  Dry-mounted, they look good and for now I'm not too worried that a gallery or museum is going to reject my prints because they're dry-mounted :)

The 'bit of fiddling about' statement is a little economical with the truth, I should say.  There is a lot of preparation needed and a fair bit of investment in materials and time to get it right.  But this is a road I always wanted to go down, mostly for the reason that I'm in the darkroom twice a week, I print a lot and I like to put my prints on the wall.  And a well-mounted print really adds a certain something, I think.  I've had a couple of prints mounted professionally but it's an expensive process and not something I would be doing with the majority of my prints.  Being able to mount my prints at home has meant that I can mount as many prints as I want relatively cheaply - plus it's easy to experiment with different mounting strategies and with different colours of mount board.

So, the process is as follows - more or less.  Choose and cut your mount board to size, allowing for a a decent border and perhaps a slightly bigger border along the bottom edge. Take your dry, as-flat-as-you-can-get print, face down and place a similarly-sized (but slightly bigger all round) piece of dry-mount tissue on top.  Using a small heated iron tack one edge of the tissue to the print - a small piece of release paper stops the tissue from sticking to the iron.  Carefully turn the print&tissue and trim a little off each edge so that the mount tissue and the print are now precisely the same size. Now position the print&tissue on the mount board (easier said than done - since the mounting process is not reversible this step calls for patience and accuracy).  When happy, place a couple of weights on the edge of the print that is already tacked to the tissue to keep the whole thing in place.  Carefully lift the bottom edge of the print away from the tissue and this time tack the tissue to the mount board, again using a small iron and release paper.  At this stage we have one edge of the print attached to the mount tissue and at the opposite edge we have the mount tissue tacked to the board.  The print now sits in place on the mount board and this print-tissue-board sandwich can be placed carefully (between two larger pieces of mount board) in the pre-heated dry mount press for the required time - somewhere around 2 minutes should be enough.  When removed, it's best to place it under a piece of glass to cool for 10 minutes or so.  At the end of this process the print is permanently attached to the mount board. Time to breathe! And hope you got that positioning correct, eh?

I should perhaps add that to complement the Dry Mount Press I also invested some of my hard-earned cash in a mount cutter from Logan.  It's very easy to use - just needs a little bit of planning and then taking a bit of care during the actual cutting.  Like most things you can spend a little or a lot on mount cutters - the bigger ones allow you cut full sheets but the price rises exponentially.  I went for the 350-1, which seems to be a decent compromise.  It can't cut a full size sheet so when I'm buying the mount board I get the guy to make one cut, taking about 1/3 off the long side.  The first time I bought mount board I got a full-size sheet cut in half but there seemed to be a lot of wastage.  If I've done my maths correctly I should get more mounts out of a full board this way.   The mount cutter is a useful tool not only for cutting the mount board itself but also for cutting a window overmat, should you decide that's what you want.  That's what I've done for the print shown above and also here:

Mounted and framed

For now I like the overmat approach.  With the slightly wider bottom border it gives a little room for a title and signature to the print (that signature alone must surely add a few 00s to the value of the work, eh?).  This particular frame is not a thing of beauty, as you can see - it's as cheap-as-they-come from Ikea with the most horrible perspex rather than proper picture glass.  As you can see, the perspex is highly reflective - hence the ghost-like apparition of yours truly taking this phone snap :)  No, the idea is to standardise on perhaps half-a-dozen print sizes and get some decent frames made.  Then swap the mounted prints in and out as and when the fancy takes me.

The downside to doing the mounting yourself is that you need space - and lots of it.  A big, flat surface on which to measure and cut is essential.  And like having a darkroom, it helps if you can have a dedicated area to do this, so you don't have to tear down and set up every time you want to cut a mount.  Well, you won't be moving the dry mount press much, or at all, truth be told.  Did I say already, those things are heavy...