I would vote for proboards. www.proboards.com

They are free, do whatever you want, except the domain name thing, and any provider for $9 a year or so can handle that for you.

They do pictures, you can have avatars, threads, discussions, searching, etc.

Then just get the domain you want and forward it to the proboards address.

Their addresses are not impossible, it's

http://username.proboardsX.com

with username being the board name, and x being a number of the server you get set up on, but forwarding a domain for $9 a year is like nothing.