Hans at the BM

To the Science Library of the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research of the British Museum to hear Hans Bjelkhagen address a packed room on the subject of Colour Holography.

At the end of the talk Hans invited his audience to view some of his superb work in this field

 

People from a wide variety of British Museum departments attended and the feeling was that ripples would go out into the museum world as a result.

Walking down the Charing Cross Road afterwards, I came across the work of another old friend, Martin Richardson, some of whose lenticular prints - Marilyn, Audrey Hepburn, Jane Fonda - were on display in a framing shop window.

I had some of these in my gallery earlier in the year and they go like hot cakes!

Patrick Boyd

One enjoyable task of the Summer has been cataloguing Patrick Boyd's archive, which he has left with me for safe-keeping as the weather in Wales wasn't doing it any good. Patrick has always been one of my favourite holographers - I have admired every aspect of his holographic output from the surreal/fashion images he made at the Royal College of Art, through the handcrafted stereograms produced as an Artist-in Residence in New York (at the MOH), at Tsukuba Univeristy in Japan and at KHM in Köln, Germany, to the remarkable nickel shim hologram Virtual Dialogues which we produced together in association with Applied Holographics. Patrick's holograms have always had tremendous style and humour and a peculiar Englishness that thoroughly appeals to me. If you don't know his work you can check some of it out at www.jrholocollection.com/collection/boyd.html

There were a number of early works that I hadn't seen before and a few boxes of masters which we had a fun evening going through. I snapped a couple of the images handheld as Patrick held the sheets of film in the light of a small diode laser. They are inevitably a bit fuzzy but I thought worth sharing.

The first is an out-take of a shoot he did for the British designer Zandra Rhodes, in the window of whose Grafton Street show-room in the West End of London two 50 x 60 cm white light transmission hologram were displayed in the late 1980s.

and the other is of Patrick with some of his RCA colleagues, Duncan Young, Rob Munday and Paul Newman, holding what I think he told me is a Darts Trophy. Ah, those were the days, when boys had big lasers and loads of film to play with!

I have recently begun to formulate a plan for an exhibition of Holography at the Royal College of Art, which would focus on that particularly creative decade (approx 1985 - 95) when holographers from around the world came to use the new facilities there and holography really began to look like a medium that artists could do something with. This would coincide with a show on Post Modernism the V&A museum in London is currently planning and in which they hope to include Patrick Boyd's outstanding portrait 'Lucy in a Tin Hat' alongside Richmond Holographic Studios portrait of Boy George. (In the end only George was included).

Hot Holograms and Michael Jackson

Yesterday was probably the hottest day of the year so far, and what was I doing? Installing an exhibition with dozens of spotlights and no air-conditioning - Phew!

It was a smallish show in the town of Alton, Hampshire, near the South Coast of England, where the museum is noted for its exceptional collection of ceramics and its pretty country garden. The exhibition had been booked by the local museum service and when the curator of the gallery came in to inspect my work I think he was lost for words. "This is a bit different" was all he could muster and then, looking around and spotting Inaki Beguiristain's "Delft Vase" hologram, "Nice Pot"!

The gallery has hessian-covered walls and exposed wooden beams, which give it a distinctly 1970s vibe, so not entirely inappropriate, it might be said, for some of the work in the show, which is a mini-survey incorporating 33 framed works from the late 1970s to now, and 3 display cases of varied ephemera.

Here are a few pictures of the installation:

Mixing Art with applied holography does not always go down well with the cognoscenti, but my current philosophy is that there is a need to re-acquaint the public with everything holography can do.

One of the artefacts on display is a bottle of Michael Jackson perfume with a holographic stereogram label which I believe Craig Newswanger made at CFC Applied Holographics.

I seem to remember that a life-size version was made though I never saw it. Seeing that eBay today is bursting with 'Michael Jackson commemorative hologram O2 tickets' (offered to people who had booked to see MJ play in London this month) and which are of course lenticulars, I should think that a large hologram of Michael, looking pretty much his best, would attract some serious bids.

Lake Forest Goes to China

I've been back a few days now from the ISDH 2009 in Shenzhen, China, and my head is still reeling from all the new encounters I had. Entering China, we walked towards an array of masked officials and thermal imaging cameras to have our foreheads read for signs of swine flu. I had been standing in the sun waiting for a few minutes , wearing a hat and jacket, and was certainly rather warm. The young doctor looked at his device, led me to one side and made me sit on a stool with a thermometer under my arm for 5 minutes. I knew I wasn't ill but the thought that they might think I was and quarantine me and possibly all the English group was somewhat alarming. Fortunately I cooled down and was released into the country.

This was only my third ISDH, one at its original venue in Lake Forest, the last one in Wales and now this most recent event in the surreal surrounding of the Waterlands Resort .

I emerged from my lakeside cabin each morning into a wall of heat, sunglasses and camera lens immediately misting up, to board a golf cart driven by one of an apparently 24 hour crew to my breakfast rendezvous with other delegates. Thence to a morning session of papers followed by a sumptuous Chinese lunch - the food was really excellent, by the way. The afternoon session usually broke up around 5pm allowing time for a quick shower before dinner and evening events such as the Art Forum.

The international turn-out did not disappoint and, along with the expected large Asian contingent, holographers had made the trip from all parts of Europe and North America. Here we are just peeling off from the group photo.

I found the presentations kept my attention pretty much all day long and for one who nods off at the mention of an equation they were mercifully thin on the ground. One highlight was Dieter Jung's talk on his work which , despite being about three times the expected length, was totally absorbing and memorable. Another was Jacques Desbiens' lucid and entertaining exposition of his approach to digital holography , which definitely won him many converts and the well-deserved Nick Phillips Memorial Award, newly instigated by Martin Richardson. Amy Rush performing 'Holographic Love' in a sequinned mini-dress defies description, so I may have to post a video of that. David Warren's immensely long laser transmission work being paraded through the conference hall also warrants a video clip. Martina Mrongovius reading Ana Maria Nicholson's reminiscences of a life in pulsed holography actually moved me to tears which, since it did not involve any tales of heroism or cruelty to cats, is quite extraordinary to admit, but true. I could go on but would rather urge you to watch some of the video recordings online and judge for yourself.

I made new friends

That's me with the Taiwanese group, and Dieter Jung hiding in the background.
And enjoyed spending time with old friends

Pearl John , David Pizzanelli and Kaveh Bazargan amongst them.
I also made a new acquisition for my collection - a beautiful small work called "Poem" by Mary Harman, who I met for the first time at the conference. Despite all the impressive digital works on display, this was the image that spoke to me and evoked the kind of personal response I want from art.

Conference over, I had one night in Hong Kong and the Britpack joined Ya-Ling Huang and a group of her students for dinner on a floating restaurant. Everyone posed for photos - not just me, honest!

And later, in the Night Market near our hotel, I found high power laser pointers at very low prices.
Going back the next day for more, the heavens opened and monsoon rain soaked me. All of a sudden I heard my name called out and turned round to find Melissa Crenshaw and Sally Weber, on the hunt for souvenirs!

Despite a typhoon warning, leaving China was less eventful than arriving and I am back in London, thoroughly charged up by the experience and warmed by a week spent in the company of my extended holographic family. I look forward to the next time, in Toronto or at MIT or wherever the baton is passed.

The Last of Light Impressions

John Brown, the Managing Director of Light Impressions (Europe) who, when he was running Holographic Developments Ltd in the late 1970s, was one of the first people to promote holography in the UK, contacted me recently to suggest that, since LI had been bought by Opsec and they were closing the Leatherhead operation, I might like to pay them a visit and liberate some material for my archive before it was chucked in a skip. Just the kind of invitation I enjoy! So today I paid my first visit to Leatherhead in over 15 years and found John and Inaki Beguiristain sorting through the remaining stock and dismantling equipment - definitely a sad occasion for John after over twenty years on the site overseeing the production of millions of holograms. However, he cheerfully invited me into a store room where samples of the many and various applications to which Light Impressions holograms had been put had been laid to rest and said "Help Yourself". A couple of hours and several archive boxes later and I staggered out to my car, laden with goodies: packaging, stickers, toys, clothing, catalogues, magazines, CDs - you name it - and, to top it all, a metre square rainbow hologram that had been produced for Tiffany's UK sometime in the '80s (how JB came to have it is a long story). A very generous donation to the Ross Collection which will take a while to document and archive, and definitely containing a few treasures. Thank you, John!
Here is a picture of JB and Inaki with some of the material destined for the skip

and here is some of the LI Horde, laid out on my archive floor

Considering that Patrick Boyd has recently entrusted his archive to my safe-keeping, I am going to need to get some extra storage soon.

http://www.jrholocollection.com/collection/lightimpress.html

Synchronicity

Sometimes 286 seems to be at the crossroads of the holographic universe. This morning, two holographers with the same initials, PB, converged at my London residence. Philippe Boissonnet, en route from Canada to his family home in France called in to collect some work I have been storing since his exhibition last year http://www.jrholocollection.com/gallery/Aug2008/index.html
and Pepe Buitrago from Spain, who was in London for a few days holiday, came by to discuss an exhibition of his recent body of work, which I hope to show in 2010. You can see some of his previous work here: http://www.holonet.khm.de/Buitrago/INDEX.HTM
Here they are, Philippe with his wife Lorraine and Pepe with his wife Mercedes, overlooking my garden, in between showers.

We just needed Patrick Boyd to complete the set!

Holo Nightmares

The current discussion on the problems with archival stability in Fine Art Holography has clearly got me worried. Last night I had a classic anxiety dream that involved falling from a high building, no clothes, no money, in a foreign city and, worst of all...all my holograms were destroyed by a collapsing building! Jason Sapan said I should count myself lucky that so few of my holograms have degraded over time and, I must say, I do, hearing some of the horror stories out there. I have had occasion to break a hologram but fortunately was able to retrieve the master from the artist and have it reproduced, but I realise that most of the time that isn't going to be possible. It would appear that glass plates are more stable than film but evidently more research in this area is required. In the meantime I will probably continue tossing and turning in my sleep. Thanks, guys!