I have always wondered how museums handle really large photos. I can understand paintings because they come sort of “pre-mounted” on canvases, but what about photos? Say a museum received a gift of a life-sized Richard Avedon photo. How would that photo be mounted to show? Would it be framed? Glued to some kind of backing? I am not so much interested on how they attach it to the wall, but rather how do that prepare it for show. Any insights? The reason I ask is because I am thinking of making some large prints, like 40x60 or larger, but am not sure what to do once I get them.
A museum wouldn’t face mount an unmounted photo, but it won’t stop them from acquiring a photo that was face mounted by the photographer. Contemporary photographer may have their prints mounted in DiBond. Which will keep them flat and have a nice look. Causes a few headaches with handling and storage, but museums deal with it if that is what the photographer wanted.
I just strongly advise make sure the framer is using actual brand named DiBond. If seen knock offs delaminate which creates a whole new set of nightmares.
I looked into this several years ago and came across this article from a conservator at the National Gallery of Canada:
Mounting large format photographs: a temporary and reversible alternative to dry mounting
“The final product provides an even weight and tension distribution for the artwork in a way that is safe, aesthetically appropriate, and 100% reversible.”
Really big nails that they have to put in with a really big hammer, wielded by a really big person who eats really big portions of soup of really big carrots.
What’s really large? For me it’s billboard sized photographs
My first real-job was in a graphic arts repro shop, pre-digital. We often mounted very large pieces, like blowups of crime evidence for trials or installation work, up to maybe 4’ x 6’. At the time they used a big vacuum press, and they also had a large heat press for dry mounting. This wasn’t for museums and archival work of valuable stuff, for the most part.
The photo labs I used in the film era used large dry mount presses; the Seal Magnapress was 4’ x 8’, it used heat and vacuum for the pressure. D&K still sells a press of about 4’ x 6’, it’s like 12 grand. With a 20x24 dry mount press, you can do fairly large pieces if you plan them right - the top of the press has very wide, offset hinges so the work can be moved around under the hot part. I have an 11x14 dry mount press and I can mount 20x24 with it. Most of the lab work was done on acid free foam board with claimed-to-be archival mounting tissue.
“Supposedly”, high-quality dry mount tissue is removable, I’d guess you re-heat it and remove it when it’s softened, but no idea if then you have adhesive residue to remove? Never tried it.
While people talk about hinge-mounting with a mat as being the most archival and only “acceptable” way to mount fine art prints, many photographers preferred the perfect flatness of dry mounting, and galleries have been happy with it - the prints are usually better presented when dry mounted, unless you like the aesthetic look of ripples. I’ll hinge mount prints in deeper (almost shadowbox) frames without a mat and have curves and ripples - IMO, sometimes a print is a print, and sometimes it’s more of an “artifact”, a physical object that happens to be a photographic print. But shadowboxing is a more difficult and expensive way to frame, as you need the glass to be set in the frame, and then a sub-frame of some type to separate the art from the glass.