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Photo mounting question (possibly stupid)

logan2z

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I was watching a video on YouTube recently that showed members of the staff at the LA County Museum of Art handling some of Lee Friedlander's gelatin silver prints. I'm no expert in photo mounting and was trying to determine how these photos were mounted. It appears that they may have been dry mounted to something other than your typical dry mount board. It looked like they were affixed to a thick scallop-edged paper that was less rigid than the dry mount board that I've seen and used. I was hoping someone better versed in photo mounting could tell me how these were mounted and to what material.

 
Looks like hot pressed watercolor paper to me. You can buy that stuff pretty thick (600 GSM isn't too hard to find). You can buy it in acid and lignin free, so it can be archival.
 
jim10219 said:
Looks like hot pressed watercolor paper to me. You can buy that stuff pretty thick (600 GSM isn't too hard to find). You can buy it in acid and lignin free, so it can be archival.
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Thanks for the reply, Jim. Any idea why that would be chosen as the backing for a dry mounted photograph rather than the typical dry mount board?
 
It might have been LF's personal preference ?
If you are close to the gallery, it might be a nice question to ask the folks who have his work.

John
 
jnantz said:
It might have been LF's personal preference ?
If you are close to the gallery, it might be a nice question to ask the folks who have his work.

John
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I'm not close to LACMA but I am close to his gallery in San Francisco and I will ask them the next time I'm there. Just wasn't sure if there was a technical advantage to this choice that may not be known to a gallerist.
 
they look like inkjet paper with decal edges.. I do not see the raised silver gelatin print mount on the watercolour paper..
 
Bob Carnie said:
they look like inkjet paper with decal edges.. I do not see the raised silver gelatin print mount on the watercolour paper..
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I don't believe there has ever been an inkjet print made of a LF photograph. All of his prints are gelatin silver made by him in his darkroom.
 
I think Lee Friedlander shot 35mm for most of the work... as well these do not look like silver gelatin mounted on paper.. you would see the edge of the silver paper or an impression of the mount.

Most likely scan of original neg and printed inkjet... on decal paper..
 

Hmm, all I can do is to reiterate that I don't believe any inkjet prints of LF's photos exist - surely not in a museum's collection. But I'll ask his gallerist the next time I visit.
 
Did he print silver gelatin with extra wide borders? The prints looked small (say 8x12) on large paper (say 20x24).
 
Kind of hard to see whether or not there is the edge of the dry mounted silver gelatin photo in the video without any zooming to that precise area. Also deckle edges on the paper signifies it is not just a silver gelatin photo with big borders. The video clearly says it is a silver gelatin photograph made in 1973 so inkjet printing is can be ruled out.

I would agree with Jim10219 that it is a silver gelatin photograph photo mounted on a watercolor paper. One reason why one would want to do is to reduce the bulk for storing a set of photograph in a portfolio.
 
I could not see the tell tale indention of this application but I do agree if it is indeed an original silver print then this is the only option ... But I would wager that it is not an original .. as it would be a huge error to take a Lee F original silver print and take the chance of hot mounting it on watercolour paper.... just sayin.
 
The proper way of presenting classic original silver prints of that era would be to use corner mounts that do not impede in any way the original print... I would cringe to think they applied a hot mount tissue to this persons work.
 
Bob Carnie said:
The proper way of presenting classic original silver prints of that era would be to use corner mounts that do not impede in any way the original print... I would cringe to think they applied a hot mount tissue to this persons work.
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It looked like corner mounts in the early part of the video but I wasn't sure what I was looking at...
 
Bob Carnie said:
The proper way of presenting classic original silver prints of that era would be to use corner mounts that do not impede in any way the original print... I would cringe to think they applied a hot mount tissue to this persons work.
Click to expand...
I only use my dry mount press these days for flattening prints. I mount everything with corners and an over mat.
 
Bob Carnie said:
The proper way of presenting classic original silver prints of that era would be to use corner mounts that do not impede in any way the original print... I would cringe to think they applied a hot mount tissue to this persons work.
Click to expand...
I assumed (maybe incorrectly) that if the print was dry mounted to the watercolor paper then it was Friedlander himself who did it.
 
I just googled QUICKLY his prints for sale... 4-9 thousand Euros each.... there is no way in hell anyone is mounting with tissues these prints onto a second substrate. and I doubt the deckled edge paper is from the era that these images were taken in.. I am now back to my thoughts that these are inkjet prints. Scanned possibly from original... you can buy this type of paper easily .


just sayin.. In the middle where the ladies were sorting through the prints I did not observe any corner mounts.
 
The prints look like they are signed. I doubt a museum would have inkjet prints in their collection, much less that Mr. Friedlander would sign inkjets. A quick look at some Friedlander prints for sale at Pace/MacGill Gallery describes them as "mounted on board." The one thing that strikes me as odd in the video is they are handling the prints without gloves.
 
I didn't see the raised edges at first either. But if you look closely and on a good monitor, you can see them run about 1/8" past the edge of the print.

They may have been pressed before they were deemed so valuable. Or, the artist may have done it himself. Artists are a lot less likely to care about archivalness than museums or collectors. Many artists intentionally make things to be short lived, choosing something that gives a desired look and willingly neglect whatever happens to their work after they're done with it. To them, it's the process that matters, not the value as a long-term investment.
 

It wasn't too long ago that dry mounted prints were the norm....not so pooh-poohed by the museum folks like they presumably do today. When I first learned silver gelatin printing in the 80's, that was what was taught to me, never knew any other way.
 
I learned the same thing a decade earlier, but that was nearly 50 years ago. Best practices evolve over time.
 
faberryman said:
I learned the same thing a decade earlier, but that was nearly 50 years ago. Best practices evolve over time.
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Exactly. My point was we should not be surprised that Friedlander would have done this himself or that it was out of the ordinary somehow. I have actually seen prints mounted this way and I think they look very elegant, with semi-glossy surface of the FB silver gelatin contrasting with the rich texture of slightly warm cotton papers.
 
at about 19 and 26 seconds you can see corners used to hold the silver print onto a board or whatever. they see to be small images printed on large paper or .. something similar...
 
jnantz said:
at about 19 and 26 seconds you can see corners used to hold the silver print onto a board or whatever. they see to be small images printed on large paper or .. something similar...
Click to expand...

In that particular instance, it seems to me that the photo is mounted on a watercolor paper (if that is the consensus) which is then held on to a more rigid board with some sort of paper corners. The watercolor paper is embossed or indented that gives it a 3D look like an overmat would do. You can see that more clearly later like in this screenshot:




Very interesting that the interleaving paper also looks like the paper on which the photo is mounted.
 
nmp said:
Very interesting that the interleaving paper also looks like the paper on which the photo is mounted.
Click to expand...
The interleaving paper looks like standard issue archival tissue. I get mine from Archival Methods.
 
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