How to display B&W photos

October 10, 2011 12:18 PM

How to display a small collection of Vietnam-War-era photos in my living room?

I've gone through my father-in-law's photos from his stint in Vietnam and selected some great shots that I'd like to hang on a wall in my living room--pictures from helicopters, fishermen, things like that. I've got about a dozen or so total, but I could definitely go with fewer.

There are of course collage frames, but the ones I've found seem too modern and perhaps informal for the subject matter. I've considered individual mattes-and-frames, but this is pricey and I'm not sure that works much better. Does anyone have any suggestions for mounting and arrangement?

Also, the originals are all small prints that I'd like to blow up to about 8x10 or so, but in the past the services I've used for this were either too low-end, e.g. Kinko's, or too high end ("art quality", with the associated expense). Is there a decent middle-ground solution?

posted by Nahum Tate to Home & Garden (3 answers total)

Not creative at all, but my man-person has a collection of b&w's that he took around our town and such. He got a bunch of the plain flat black edged frames (I think they were Walmart's basic frame line), and used the mattes that came with the frames, and it was only a couple of bucks a frame that way. We also had a wall covered in 4x6 shots (all laid out in a grid, with maybe an inch or two between the rows - I think we had 20-some photos together in horizontal, and maybe another 16 on a different wall in vertical) all in little plain black-edged box frames as well, and it had a nice feel to it, and worked better than the pre-arranged collage frames. It depends on your surrounding decor, really, but there's a good chance it would look better than you're thinking right now.

but the real reason I came here was to mention that my dad has been really happy with the balance of price and quality he's been getting from the Target self-serve photo editing kiosk. I don't know if this is still too low-budget, but he frames the 8x10s he gets there all the time.
posted by dust.wind.dude at 12:45 PM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

How about those floating frames, where you sandwich the picture between two panes of glass, and put each picture into one of those, with a piece of green canvas (like I imagine was used for stretchers and rucksacks) behind it, maybe even frayed a bit.
posted by lakeroon at 5:40 PM on October 10, 2011

Best answer: lots of thrift stores will have piles of framed prints - get ones that are in frames that you like, toss out the print and replace it with your photo. You will end up with a bunch of different frames, but if you paint them all the same colour, they could make a really interesting arrangement. Matting can also be painted either to match the frames, or in a shade that compliments them.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 6:39 PM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]