To Frame or Not To Frame?

For a picture this can be an existential question. Frames can make or break a picture and/or the sale of the picture. It's a question I've wrestled with for my entire life and which came to the forefront of my attention again recently when one of our East Coast clients inquired about frames for her work.

Janet is putting together a show and wondered whether the giclée prints we make of her photographs should be framed for presentation. Writing an answer I found myself stumped, which is odd for me because I usually have too much advice not too little.

Janet had seen a show at a gallery in Cape Cod where the pictures had thin frames with a brushed gold finish. Her question was whether I thought such frames would add to the 'look' of the pictures in her show. In my mind's eye I could just see her pictures in such frames and they would be a good combo. But that's a unique situation both in terms of the frames used in that show and that they should have caught both our client's eye and my imagination.

Usually I tell our clients to avoid framing their work or if they do to keep it dead simple, a thin black frame or something like that. But Janet's question got me thinking... and now several days later I am still thinking about it.

The framing conundrum is nothing new for me. I have been in the picture business for fifty years so you can imagine how many times I have sliced my finger cutting mat boards and trimming prints for framing. Through the years I have tried so many combination that I can't remember them all. Even with that perspective I cannot offer any simple answers.

Frames are as personal as the pictures they contain. Together with the picture they become something new. The picture is protected by the frame and the style of the frame gives the picture a now look. The question is, how does that new look (and higher price) affect the work's chances for sale?

Price is such an issue these days that I encourage all our artist clients to keep the sales prices as low as possible. Frames add cost and there are many ways to display pictures without frames. Our most popular at Vashon Island Imaging is the 'gallery wrap' in which the canvas giclée wraps around the sides of stretcher bars (or around the edges of a thick substrate if wrapping paper giclée prints). There is a lot about how to do gallery wraps in my book and in a previous blog.

Another popular look is mounting giclées on wood. One of our clients uses MDS, an artificially made wood product which we don't recommend as it retains considerable moisture. However, any fine wood looks and feels great. Personally, I like Teak wood and use that a lot. Teak and other hard woods are associated with quality. Others use aluminum, Plexiglas® or high quality illustration boards. Paper and canvas giclées can be dry mounted with a hot press or glued to the substrate.

Whether any of these frame-less solutions are more cost effective depends on what you spend on a frame... and there are a bazillion choices. There are plently of cheap frames available online and some of them are great values. For another of our clients we found plastic frames that looked even better than wood ones. The color permeates the plastic so there chips and scratches are virtually invisible. Plus they are lighter weight and less expensive than wood. Of course there's a bias against plastic in the Art world, which I find odd in this case.

Suppose I told you that I had a new frame material that was virtually unbreakable, lasted forever, didn't show chips or scratches, was lighter weight although stronger, and less expensive to boot. What would you say to that? You'd likely go for it. Well that stuff exists and it's called plastic. But I digress...

At the higher end of the Art scale, in galleries with snob appeal, you find giclées framed with a sizable white matte and a simple black 'strip' frame. They want nothing to 'take away' from the picture. However, at commercially successful galleries, with popular appeal, pictures often have enormous fancy frames that are distinctly part of the total art package being offered for sale. Then there's everything in between everywhere else.

Here's the dilemma... have you ever seen a 'trend' in framing? I haven't. Every home or office I have every visited has pictures framed in different styles. A trip to the local frame shop will further demonstrate the point... they have scores of samples. One shop I know in Vancouver boasts '999' kinds.

I posed this question to Donna at Frame of Mind, Vashon Island's best frame shop: 'What type of frames do photographers generally choose for their gallery displays?' Donna's black stare answered my question before her delayed words. After a long pause she said that each is different. Even as we spoke a couple was mulling over fame sample selections and obviously having a hard time making up their minds.

What Donna and I both agree on is that people buy a 'total package' and that a frame takes the picture into a new visual space by giving it a new look. That being the case the 'KISS' principle is supported... 'Keep It Simple, Stupid'.

People have a hard enough time choosing which picture they like from the vast ocean of images that is drowning the art market. They have less money now too. Why risk driving away a sale by adding a decision-complicating factor that raises the price?

Let the customer choose their own frame. That is unless you, the artist, feel that a particular frame is what your work needs to be 'complete'. In that case you are dismissed from reading this blog and may get back to work now... as I probably should too.