March 2024, Frames and Framers

Keeping you informed about happenings at Deliberate Light: photos to browse or buy, photography instruction (see also Digital Photo Academy), and services. Also, my thoughts on a photography subject: this month, Frames and Framers. To get these newsletters by email a month before they are posted here, go to the DeliberateLight.com website and click on Newsletter Signup.

NEWS

Upcoming Workshops. I am scheduled to teach the following workshops next month.

April 6, location: Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia.

· Mastering Your Camera Controls (1.5 hours) – DSLR/Mirrorless/Compact cameras (smartphone tutorial available separately)

· Composition in the Field (3 hours) – walking tour around the venue with instruction and hands-on practice composing photos (bring any camera)

New Photo. Incandescence. One striking rose, illuminated from above, emerges from the dark background foliage, reminding us, as we walk past admiringly, that sometimes it is harder to ignore beauty than is to just let go and delight in it. On our annual visit to Longwood at the time of the solstice, losing ourselves in such beauty for that brief jewel of a moment lets us move forward with serenity into that time when the world seems to be dropping into darkness. Besides, we say to ourselves, we can find beauty in the darkness too. (Kennett Square, PA, 2018)

For a more detailed, enlarged view and to get it printed, see it on my website.

VIEWS

What is it about something in a container that makes it impossible for humans to resist looking inside? It seems to be hard-wired into us and it is why frames are such a useful visual element in art and photography. The photo below illustrates my point. Frames tell you what part of the photo is less important (outside the frame) and what is more important (the inside). The use of frames within frames in this photo draws my eye quickly to the distant lit scene in the window, making me curious to see that distant scene better.

In the next photo, a similar effect occurs, further emphasized by the converging lines of the walls, pulling your eye to the little blue patch inside the door. And frames do not have to completely enclose a subject – in this photo, the walls and ground together provide a partial framing on three sides of the guard tower.

Since frames draw attention, it is good to compose a picture so that the frame contains something of note, as in this reflection of the San Francisco City Hall in a window across the street. Note that frames do not have to be rectangular to work well.

On the other hand, sometimes, the frames themselves are the focal points of the image.

Another kind of framing in pictures is the frame that typically surrounds the image. Most frames that people choose to mount their photos in are relatively plain, and it is even common for photographers to mount exhibition photos in simple black frames with white mat borders, so as not to distract from the artwork at all. When framing a picture with something a little more decorative, we usually try to select something that will not fight with but instead will set it off well.

But contrast the typical framing of pictures today with the historical frames of great painters. If you go to an art museum, you will see that many (most?) pre-modern paintings are mounted in frames that are themselves works of art. An example is one of my favorite paintings: “Flaming June” by Frederic Leighton, in the Museo de Arte de Ponce. This is an exact replica of the frame that Leighton originally put on the painting and therefore presumably was an integral to the painting. But it is itself also an incredible work of art.

And lest you believe that all great master painters used only ornate gilt frames, here is a gorgeous frame on “Young woman with a lute” by Vermeer hanging in the Met in New York. Again, the frame is a complement to the art work, in my opinion.

Spend an afternoon in any good art museum and you will find hundreds of other examples of great artworks, namely the frames, in the service of great paintings.

But I am willing to bet large sums of money that you will not find there any mention of the framers who produced these incredible works. It is one of my gripes about art museums: they tell you a great deal about the paintings and the painters (as they should), but completely neglect the makers of the frame or, really, any information about the frame at all.

Sadly, if you did know more about the frames, you would likely also find that many (most?) of the great paintings have had multiple frames mounted on the paintings by a sequence of owners who thought they knew best how to frame the art. In fact, in some cases, it is impossible to identify the painter’s original framing choices. Changing the artist’s choice of frame seems kind of like deciding to change “Flaming June” to a pink gown to better reflect contemporary tastes.

Well, you can imagine that there are people who dedicate themselves to the framers’ art, who ferret out the makers and do the detective work to determine provenance. Not surprisingly a lot of them work for art museums. If you would like to spend hours diving down a fascinating rabbit-hole on this topic, there is a blog (of course there is a blog) that I can recommend called The Frame Blog (www.theframeblog.com) with associated links.

Carl Finkbeiner

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