The six holograms on view are: Crystal Beginning, Rind II, Motif I, and Head of Aphrodite (“The Bartlett Head”), all by Benton, as well as Equivocal Forks II, and Medusa by Benton’s collaborators and students. With this installation, the public will be able to view a small but significant selection of the key experimental holograms created by Benton and his collaborators between 1968 and 1978, when he honed his technique, pushing the technical and artistic boundaries of holography and creating new works with each investigation.

Stephen Benton called himself an “optiker” – someone who works at the intersection of light and vision – Benton innovated a new way to create holograms. His white-light transmission, or rainbow, holograms are viewable in the readily accessible light of a light bulb or the sun. Up to that point, most holograms required a laser to be seen. Benton’s invention injected energy into the field, opening new possibilities in imaging across scientific and commercial applications, and creating a new medium for artists to explore.

“I don’t believe that these four pioneering works by Benton have ever been shown together before,” said Deborah Douglas, Senior Director of Collections and Curator of Science and Technology. “Each represents a milestone, revealing the complex interplay between art and science in Benton’s inventive process.”

The Stephen A. Benton Holography Collection accessioned in 2023 includes archival materials and holograms created by Benton and his students as well as works donated by Benton’s many collaborators. It joins the 2,000 holograms and related artifacts in the collection of the MIT Museum, significantly expanding what has already been recognized as the largest such collection in the world. The installation will be on view from June 28, 2024 through July 2025, and was curated by Deborah Douglas with technical advising by Seth Riskin, Studio Director of the MIT Museum Studios.

About Stephen Benton and his holograms

The MIT Media Lab founding faculty member, known for his pioneering work in spatial imaging, grew up in the 1940s and 50s fascinated by 3D movies.Renowned photographer and electrical engineering professor Harold Edgerton, Benton’s mentor during his undergraduate years at MIT, introduced him to Polaroid founder Edwin Land, who offered Benton a lab at Polaroid to conduct experiments.

Benton made his first conventional hologram there in 1965, together with John and Mary McCann and his wife Jeannie. In 1968, he made his own groundbreaking contribution to holography – the first white-light transmission, or “rainbow,” holograms.

Benton continued his pioneering research at Polaroid until he returned to MIT as a visiting scientist in 1980. In 1982, he founded the Spatial Imaging Group and in 1984 became one of the founding faculty members of the MIT Media Laboratory. He would pioneer new technologies in digital holography, medical imaging, and holographic video.

“Steve Benton was not only a gifted engineer and inventor, enthusiast for all things optical and art-science collaborator-extraordinaire, he is also the reason the MIT Museum became the world’s most significant repository,” said Deborah Douglas, adding, that “when the New York Museum of Holography closed in 1992 due to financial difficulties, Steve, with the support of Charles Vest, then president of MIT and a former holographer himself, raised the funds to purchase the NY museum’s entire collection and bring it to MIT. Steve then helped curate the MIT Museum’s original holography exhibitions and served until his untimely death in 2003 as the our unofficial curator of holography.”

About the works on view

Motif I (1968) is the first white-light transmission hologram. Created by Stephen. A. Benton, this work represented a proof of concept for his invention that uses full-spectrum light to generate a sharp, 3D image in a single color that changes as the viewer moves up and down. Motif I marked the beginning of a decade of experimentation to refine and apply the technique in fields as varied as medical imaging, commercial printing, and visual art.

Crystal Beginning (1977) was developed as a spatial testing mechanism and later as a showpiece of white-light transmission holography. These two versions of the work differ in the type of aperture used – horizontal slit (right) and open aperture (left). The use of a horizontal slit in the making of the hologram reduces information along its vertical axis, clearing from the image the repetition of points in different colors. The result – a sharp, deep, single-color image of a 3D point grid – was a technical achievement that Benton used as a teaching tool, challenging students to figure out how it was created. This White-light transmission hologram was created by Stephen A. Benton, Herbert S. Mingace, Jr., and William R. Houde-Walter.

Rind II (1977) represents one of the formative explorations Benton conducted as he refined his white-light transmission holography technique. The hologram is based on M.C. Escher’s “Rind,” a woodcut of a spiraling ribbon that articulates a band of inner and outer contours of a human head. Benton created many versions of this hologram, on the way to achieving precision effects in holograms he called “primo.” Here, while reflecting on the past, Benton demonstrates the artistic potential of his new method of generating depth through the manipulation of light waves. This white-light transmission hologram was created by Stephen A. Benton, Herbert S. Mingace, Jr., and William R. Houde-Walter.

Head of Aphrodite ("The Bartlett Head") 1978, was described by Benton as “the best-ever achromatic image.” This work represents a culminating moment in Benton’s development of white-light transmission holography. It began when Edwin Land at Polaroid boldly asked to borrow the Head of Aphrodite, a centerpiece of the classical Greek sculpture collection of the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston. Guards from the MFA brought the sculpture to Polaroid disguised in a wicker picnic basket for a two-day shoot. Land considered Benton’s work to be a supreme technical achievement, and the choice of this sculpture underscores the significance he and Benton placed on this new holography technique in the historical context of human image making.

In the end, Benton was able to present the 3D light field of the object, separated from its solid form, as he unveiled white-light transmission holography to the Board at Polaroid. This hologram illustrated the commercial potential of his technique – which retains the natural connection between white light and the human brain – while exploiting the information-encoding power of holography. This white-light transmission hologram was created by Stephen A. Benton, Jeannie L. Benton, Herbert S. Mingace, Jr., and William R. Houde-Walter.

As Benton developed the Head of Aphrodite hologram, he kept technical notes and took Polaroid photos of the work in progress. Along the way, he even documented the excitement as well as the pressure he felt around the upcoming Polaroid Board meeting, where he was to present his results. Benton’s scrapbook is presented in the exhibition.

Benton was keenly interested in seeing his white-light transmission holography method adopted and expanded, and Harriet Casdin-Silver was the first artist to collaborate with him. She pursued holography as an artistic medium, while pioneering technical innovations, as this piece demonstrates. Designed to be spatially deep and dynamic and lit by the sun, this hologram Equivocal Forks II (1977) was one of eight included in the groundbreaking outdoor sculpture Centerbeam, a collaborative artwork created at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies and shown at the documenta 6 exhibition in Germany in 1977.

Several of Benton’s students created a pioneering holographic stereogram entitled Medusa (1985-86). They used holographic film to encode both photographic and computer-generated images in stereo strips that the eyes see as a 3D scene. This work illustrates the critical relationship Benton nurtured with the next generation of holographers. It also represents a time of transition, as work expanded from analog white-light transmission holography to computer-generated stereograms. Following Benton’s lead with white-light transmission holography, his students began inventing and adapting technologies with a vision of mainstreaming applications like holographic video, holographic printing, and haptic holography. The computer generated artwork and rendering is by Mark Holzbach, Alejandro Ferdman, David Chen, MIT Spatial Imaging Group, MIT Media Laboratory; and the production is by Craig Newswanger, Advanced Dimensional Displays.

About the holography collection of the MIT Museum

The MIT Museum has the largest and most comprehensive collection of holograms in the world, with over 2,000 holograms, including many “rainbow” holograms. A key contributor to the Museum of Holography in New York City, MIT Professor Stephen Benton was instrumental in helping raise funds for the MIT Museum to acquire its collection after that museum closed in 1992. In 2021, Benton’s family donated his personal collection of holograms to the MIT Museum, significantly enhancing the story of white-light transmission holography within the Museum’s collection.