Rules on where to hang family photos?

I'm slightly on your side, in that a living room is not as intimate a space as a hall or bedroom or den or.. kitchen. But I'm all for hanging things where you want to, cultural mores be damned. I have what portraits or snaps I have placed along a longish hallway.

Which reminds me, I've a painting that a friend of my fathers did of me, probably from a baby photo, that my parents did have in the living room, if I remember correctly. It didn't looking anything like the cranky baby I was but instead was this kind of baby artifact. I still have that painting, not on any wall, and I now plain old hate it, but.. I can't just toss it.

Thank you, osso.

I too used to display family photos in a longish hallway and didn't have any problem with it. The hallway was perfect for a display and it led to the private areas of the house.

I was beginning to wonder if I didn't display them because I took them and it felt like some sort of advertisement or something or, if they didn't inspire any comment that that meant that people didn't like them. Silly but true.

I've started working again a bit which further complicates the matter. ("The matter" just came up -- we had our floors refinished last weekend, since we had moved out all of the furniture I freshened the wall paint in the living room and now I need to rehang the room.)

In terms of rules, I see living rooms with family photos in them all the time. It's a pretty standard thing -- the big studio shots of either just the kids or the whole family (or the whole family in the middle with individual shots of kids to the side, especially if an even number of kids). Often a whole passel o' family pics en masse, in the living, dining or family rooms (or all three).

I still don't have stuff on my walls (don't ask, but not my preference, grrr) but have it all planned out and one includes a professional photo of me and sozlet taken for a magazine (not torn from the magazine, a print the photographer gave us). I chose it because it's a very nicely done photo and also the background includes a lot of the objects in the room (the photo was taken at our old house) without actually being the room. It just seemed interesting to me.

Then I had one other photo of sozlet that I really like (that I took) planned for downstairs.

All the others are planned to be in a hallway upstairs (private) and in other more-private places.

I don't think there's a single space in the house where family photos aren't appropriate. It's your house, for crying out loud! Why wouldn't people expect to see photos of who/what is important to you?!

I get the "advertising" angle, but I think you're being overly self-conscious. A good picture is a good picture. A better question would be, "How do Mr. B and Mo feel about seeing photos of themselves on the walls?" If it doesn't bother them, why should it bother you?

Our house has a traditional center hall plan, and the entrance hall and the wall going up the stairs are both filled with old family photos.

Well didn't you just complicate things!

I do have a small version this old photo of Mo....



.... hanging in an inconspicuous place (entry hall). I've been thinking about making a large version (have the frame, matt, etc.) to hang in the dining room but just can't make the jump.

I'd be interested in those photos you mention, wherever you hung/hang them.

I'm a tad jaded at the sort of plastic photo portraits from the typical outlets (not the kind of photos Boom makes) - I much prefer a terrific snap - but I also get that for families those portraits become dear. I have some of my aunts and uncles et al back in the thirties. Starchy group... and they do get dearer by the day.

Just remembered, I do have a large original photo of my father's mother in my bedroom (let's have no hanky panky here! - kidding, and I've two nude paintings to dispel that aura of olden censure). I never met her, she died in the thirties. The portrait is touched up with pencil or some other device..

That is a better question. Thank you, Eva.

I guess it doesn't bother Mr. B since he asked about it and I know for a fact Mo is in love with himself and has no problem with photos of him everywhere.

I never got this done in my last old and quite big house, in contrast to the present one, but I had ideas for rooms to be about something. The guest bedroom, the one with the murphy bed, would be the photography room. The living room was the big paintings, plans for shelves for art books. The dining room was for horizontal landscape paintings and some collected ceramics; the computer room was for wild crappo; the bedroom, more paintings and the odd drifts of scarves, and the travel books. That house had only tiny halls..

I have pictures all over the house - not hanging actually, but on display on
counters, desks, tables and fireplace mantel. I also like to see family pictures
displayed in other houses.

So do I. It gives me a sense of context about who I am visiting.

Rules? I don't think there are rules.

We all just feel differently about these things.

I don't like family photos/portraits on walls - any kind/anywhere. I just don't like it. Small photos of family members in frames on shelfs etc, I'm ok with - in any part of the house.

I generally don't like art involving people. I have two weird exceptions - paintings/prints of women reading - and French advertising art.

U shoud do whatever makes u happy.
Its your own home; put them wherever u want,
decided by whatever criteria appeal to u;
u r the only judge and the final judge.





David

I just realized why - if I don't have my glasses on, I can't see them. So bring on the small photos!

rule number 1

never hang them in the pissoir

hang in rows of odd numbers with the top of the pix aligned to form a straight line

balance the shapes either side of a centred vertical

as a gallery owner, twice, I can see that as an original rule, not that I agree. I also know a common eye height rule, which results in different positioning.
Balance, yes, but sometimes one needs to blow those token rules..

I do admit to being disturbed by zig zag painting positioning.. and take it as amateurville.

any more of that and you'll be hung drawn and quartered but not in that order

Cough, I think I like you, Oolong.

Which is to say, you make me think.

which leads mean to rule # 2

jim morrison is always hung up on aldous huxley

while cooking semper adore

all ways with veal

anyone with 3 o's must be ok oozo

artistic licence

I don't understand any of that though I did have the opportunity as a lab tech to stick him and her. I chickened out. I am, after all, not perfect. Marilyn did the stab and remonstrated to me that I was 'not lab'.

But wait, what are we talking about?

I do have more photos to post.