Frameless Pictures

When photographs are printed and hung on a wall, they often have a frame and a matte. Sometimes though, photographers, like other visual artists, choose to display their pictures without a frame – so-called “frameless” mounting. The picture here is an example of that.

This example does have a solid side, but sometimes frameless mounts don’t even have that – they may be mounted flat on the wall, or have a small hidden mount behind the picture so that it appears to be floating in front of the wall. In any case, the point is that there is nothing in the same plane as the picture itself.

I’m not sure of the reasons that other artists choose to use frameless mounting, but for me, it represents a way to communicate that the picture is part of a larger image. In particular, part of a 360 degree panorama, or spherical picture. At any given time, the scene around us is available to see in a 360 sense. However, we can only see part of it because our vision is limited to less than a full sphere.

In a sense, our vision always operates within a frame, and we just move that frame around to see a different part of the whole scene at different times. Since my interest is creating 360 photos for people to interact with, the pictures don’t have a frame other than the one that the viewer experiences by moving the area of focus around. So in like manner, if I want to represent the 360 photo in a fixed print, one way to communicate that the picture is much more than one sees in the print is to mount it in a frameless manner.

Sometimes, I link the printed picture to a 360 photo so that the print becomes a gateway to the interactive 360 photo. In that case, the frameless mounting is also an indication that the picture has that capability.

In the picture above, the little QR code on the side of the picture links to a 360 photo taken at the same location as the image in the print. If the viewer scans the QR code with their phone, they will be taken directly to that interactive photo.

Hopefully future versions of these pieces will have other ways of triggering the VR experience that are easier or more fun.

In any case I’m exploring different ways of creating frameless experiences, and only time will tell which form I’ll settle on.