Blog 2025
December 26th 2025
The image of Posy Jackson above is a pulsed hologram by Ana Maria Nicholson
At this moment, between Christmas and the New Year, I am thinking about the Holographic Pioneers we have lost since those beginning days in the 60s. Dennis Gabor, Emmett Leith, Yuri Denysuk, Margaret Benyon, Ken Haines, Steve Benton, Harriet Casdin-Silver, Lloyd Cross, Posy Jackson, Anait, Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, Dr. Tung H. Jeong (better known as TJ), Sharon McCormack, Nick Phillips, Rudie Berkhout, Dan Schweitzer, Fred Unterseher, Becky Deem, Ruben Nunez, to name a few. I feel a great urgency to document this early history before the stories of those times fade away.
I began the Virtual Museum of Holography back in 2019, as a fiscally sponsored project of the HoloCenter (then under the direction of Martina Mrongovius) with a mission to preserve the rich and varied history of Holography and to catalog the ongoing development of this medium before its fragile early work is lost entirely.
This was just before we went into lockdown with COVID, and everything changed. I took over the HoloCenter from Martina after she returned to Australia, and the VMOH went on the back burner as I worked on relocating the HoloCenter to Kingston, NY.
However, as I now dig deeper into this amazing history of Holography, I am reminded of this piece written by Posy Jackson in support of the VMOH on the VMOH website https://vmoholo.org/#/. If you scroll through the many endorsements of the VMOH on this link by leading artists, scientists, and engineers, you will find one by Posy Jackson, Founding Director of the Museum of Holography. It is too long for this post on LinkedIn, but I encourage you to explore our original site and Posy’s endorsement in particular. https://vmoholo.org/#/
For those of you who want to know more about the extraordinary images we call Holograms and to understand their true nature, I recommend you check out my “Understanding Holograms” course, which begins again on January 17th. If you sign up before January 1st, you will receive a $50 discount for early registration. Check it out at https://lnkd.in/efty7Rnr.
December 23rd 2025
The hologram images above from left to right, are by Margaret Benyon, Rudie Berkhout, Ana Maria Nicholson and Sam Moree.
“Understanding Holograms” is my entry-level course for all who want to learn about this expanding field of dimensional imagery. This foundational course will bring you up to date about all aspects of Holography, from the early beginnings in Optical Holography, and looking at the latest developments in the rapidly evolving digital holographic approaches and in Light Field Technology.
While we explore the multiplicity of creative approaches taken by artists in the field of Fine Art Holography, we will also explore the misinformation widely dispersed about holography in general. You will learn how to clearly distinguish between the real deal and fake holograms, and we will also take a look at complementary techniques like Lenticular images, Photogrammetry, LIDAR, Volumetric Capture, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality, all of which have applications to the latest approaches to Digital Holographic imaging.
You can enroll for this course until December 31st at a special early registration price of $450, saving $50. From 1/1/26, the course will be at its full price of $500. Classes begin online on January 17th, 2026. Please go the the website for full details of the curriculum and the link to register https://lnkd.in/efty7Rnr
I also want to let you know that I have 2 new courses under development for 2026. Starting in February, I am offering a step-by-step online course designed to guide you through the process of making your own single-beam holograms. With classes every other week, you will have time to gather the equipment you need, build your own mini optical table, and experiment with shooting in a number of different configurations. Our biweekly sessions will be opportunities for you to troubleshoot any problems you run into, to share your creations with your classmates via Zoom, and to learn multiple approaches.
My second new course is targeted to artists, art curators, museum professionals, and anyone wishing to learn the Art History of Holography. This 10-week online course will take you from the early beginnings of Art Holography, looking at the work of pioneering artist Margaret Benyon, and the many artists who followed her. We will explore how this medium expanded in partnership with the scientists who were designing new Holographic techniques and how many centers around the world became focal points for new creative holographic techniques. In the last two sessions, we will explore the requirements of holographic exhibition design and how to install and light them correctly.
I highly recommend you join me for my “Understanding Holograms” course as a foundation for these two new classes. Please contact me at lindalaw@lindalawholographics.com if you have any questions. Hope to meet you in class on Zoom in the New Year.
December 21st 2025
The images above are of the covers of some of the documentation I’m exploring.
Holographic Art / Technology History
I was going to title this post Holographic Art History, but the truth is, the technology has been as important as the creative drive to make Holographic Art.
I recently received a treasure trove of books, HoloSphere newsletters, exhibition catalogs, ISDH proceedings, and artist monographs that date back as far as the mid-70s. In my process of cataloging them, I’m filling in the gaps of my knowledge from those years. So much was happening in so many places. My own experiences at that time were focused mainly on the US, UK, and Canada, but creativity in both Art and Technology was bubbling up in hotspots around the world.
This gathering up of Holographic world knowledge for me is a process of collecting stories seeded into communities around the world. These stories are held by the senior members of our community who lived in those times, artists, scientists, engineers, who hung out with Dennis Gabor, Steve Benton, Yuri Denysuk, Dr. Tung Jeong, TJ as he was affectionately known, Richard Rallinson, Nick Phillips, Ken Haines, Margaret Benyon, Posy Jackson, Dan Schweitzer, Fred Unterseher, Rudie Berkhout, Harriet Casdin-Silver, Anait, Lloyd Cross and Sharon McCormack, Eve Ritscher, Becky Deem, Salvador Dali, to name a few who are no longer with us.
So, coming back to this process of collecting Holographic History. I am delighted to immerse myself in this wealth of stories, memories recalled, and my own sizable collection of photographic documentation of Holographic History. I’m reaching out to those of you who have stories to tell of those times, of the individuals whose holographic explorations brought new wonder to all who saw their work. I’m collecting history for the Virtual Museum of Holography. www.vmoholo.org.
Please add your stories in the comments below, or get in touch to record a formal interview about a great story you hold of those early days.
More to come as I dive deeper into this rich past.
For those of you who want to learn more about the evolving field of Holography, you might want to consider taking my course “Understanding Holograms” - registration for the next course starting January 17th begins today, with an early bird discount of $50.
hashtag#Holograms, hashtag#HolographicArt hashtag#virtualmuseumofholography
November 21st 2025
I took this image of Rudie Berkhout with Margaret Benyon's opening at the Museum of Holography - probably in 1978.
As I begin to immerse myself in the process of gathering holographic history, I find myself going back to those early days - 1975 onwards, remembering so many people who are now gone. Remembering the ISDH conferences at Lake Forest College in the summer, and our group of 100 or so holographic artists, engineers, and scientists who got together and delivered papers. We had the campus to ourselves and a week to be totally immersed in Holography. These gatherings were marathons. We were all thrilled to be with this group of comrades, with numerous people to meet and many long conversations to be had. Dr Tung Jeong, or TJ as everyone knew him, was the ring-master, ever enthusiastic and encouraging of all of us. Steve Benton was the Pied Piper of Holography, taking his cutting-edge ideas and techniques and making them accessible to artists, and we were blessed by Emmet Leith and many other leading scientists and engineers, as well as Posy Jackson, Director of the Museum of Holography.
The uniqueness of this conference was this blend of Art, Science, and Technology, and the opportunity to learn and exchange. I cochaired the Art Holography session of the second ISDH and co-curated the exhibition with Michael Croydon, Head of the Art Department at Lake Forest College. These were the best of times, on par with exhibition openings, particularly at the Museum of Holography in New York, or in different places around the world, as the exhibition numbers grew.
The Lake Forest gatherings, every three years, were where the various international groups of holographers came together. By the early 80s, there were holographic artists working in the UK, France, Germany, Holland, Australia, Japan, East and West coast Canada, and in pockets around the US - New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston. Those ISDH (International Symposium on Display Holography) conferences were unique moments in time. Something I think we all were acutely aware of.
As we build the Virtual Museum of Holography, www.vmoholo.org, you will have the opportunity to see work from those artists, hear their stories, learn about the technology that underlies it, and the many applications of Holography that are embedded in our everyday lives today (that most people are unaware of).
November 20th 2025
Hologram by Michael Crawford
Hologram by Dora Tass
Understanding Holograms - my foundational course about the still incredible medium of Holography is about to start tomorrow. There is still time to sign up at https://lnkd.in/emduJkjZ
I want to let you know that I am preparing two new classes that will begin next year. Talking with many visitors to the HoloCenter Gallery, it is clear to me that there is a new generation of artists interested in learning how to make holograms. We also have new tools that are making it easier to start doing this - tiny diode lasers, single beam systems, and self-developing photopolymer film. There is also a growing group of artists working with coating their own dichromated gelatin plates (like those early days of photography), and silver halide films are beginning to become available again.
My first new class, beginning in March, will be a step-by-step online course that will take you through the process of making your own Holographic Camera and learning how to make a number of different types of Single Beam holograms. Classes will be every other week to give you time to assemble the equipment you need so that I can step you through the process, class by class. This will allow you to share your experiences and holograms with your classmates, as well as get feedback if there are problems.
My second class, beginning in April, is designed for Art Curators and others who wish to learn more about Holographic Art History. I am seeing a growing interest in Holographic Art in some of the major museums around the world, but there is clearly a lack of knowledge regarding the Art History of Holography, as well as about the design, installation, and lighting of holograms. This 8-week course will ground you in Holographic Art History, from the 60s until now, exploring the work of pioneering artists, their collaborations with various scientists and engineers, and the creative ideas that have been expressed through the unique properties of this dimensional medium. We will take a deep dive into the evolution of these ideas, beginning with Margaret Benyon’s work and exploring the creative threads that evolved as artists around the world began to make holograms. As we explore the art created in numerous different types of holograms, you will also learn about their requirements for exhibition and the factors that need to be considered when designing and installing shows.
Look out for upcoming posts as I open up these two classes for registration in December. I recommend you sign up early to get my Early Bird discount.
Check out my class starting tomorrow, it is a good foundation to grasp the big picture of what Holography is, its many applications, and the overlap with other media as we move forward into a digital holographic world. https://lnkd.in/emduJkjZ