In this still life I employed various optics (a cylindrical lens, a multifaceted glass sphere, a concave mirror, and several plane front-surface mirrors) as integral elements of the overall composition. The holographic medium encourages the viewer to examine the space from various perspectives. In the work I have attempted to incorporate conceptual ties to the past. For example, reflections in the small concave mirror are reminescent of anamorphic distortions popular in painting and graphics in the 17th and 18th century.
This hologram is one of a number of laser transmission holograms that I made in the 1980s and was exhibited in 1988 in Images in Time and Space, an International holography exhibit at its Los Angeles venue.
photograph of a virtual image of one view of this laser transmission hologram. The hologram was recorded on a high resolution holographic glass plate and reconstructed with an expanded laser beam.
This hologram was exhibited in 1988 and 1992 in Images in Time and Space, an international holography exhibit at its Los Angeles and Santa Monica venues. To my knowledge "Night Sky" was the first mixed media work combining photography and holography to be shown in either a gallery or museum setting. In the piece the stars appear in depth behind the clouds in the photograph, as they would in real life.
reflection hologram, hand-tinted b/w silver gelatin photograph
My interest in holography began while I was a postdoc in Engineering at UCLA. The practice of holography is as much an art as a science, as understanding the physics behind holography doesn't ensure that one can make a good hologram. From the 1970s through the early 2000s, I practiced both the technical art of holography and holography as an artistic medium of expression. The archive of my holographic work contains over sixty holograms all of which were made on apparatuses of my design and implementation. Included below are a few examples of my art holography.
This photograph shows me at the recording plane of Fred Unterseyer's Pulse Laser Camera in North Hollywood, California
Man in Mask, Holographers Dan Schweitzer and Shawn Gibb, (clockwise from left)
Holographers Fred Unterseyer, Craig Newswanger, Unknown Man, Dan Schweitzer, Bill Hilliard. (clockwise from left)