Framing
The frame is the barrier between the world you have created inside it and reality. The frame must react with both what’s inside it and its surroundings.
Some images are so powerful that they need containing in the same way that gunpowder only produces its full force when contained. Others require support, an intermediary on its journey to the eye.
There are enigmatic pictures that want no frame yet look exposed when hung without one, small pictures which disappear when the common rules of framing are applied, minimalist images that need a frame which perfectly balances the construction of the image itself in order to vanish from the consciousness.
Frames can acknowledge the period of an image without being a “period frame”. Scale and finish can evoke associations with the image that set it in context, at a fraction of the price of a copy.
When I frame, there are no gimmicks, but that’s not to say that you will come away with the usual framing suspects. To see this in action, take a look at the Gallery and the Frame of the Month page. These are frames that, for all sorts of reasons, illuminate the image in some extra way.
Not that we can achieve miracles every time. An employer’s liability certificate it will always be just that, but professional certificates and even the ones the children bring home on an apparently daily basis, may have been designed by someone with care and some imagination.
Before putting the little black frame round them, stop and ask yourself “Does it have to be like this?” The answer is probably “No”. A few minutes thought can produce an idea much more fitting or entertaining.
Framing doesn’t have to be boring. It can make you smile and even emit the odd chuckle.
