Catalog of a Collection of Photographs by Gérard Allon in the Judaica Collection of the Harvard library

If you shatter a holographic plate, you will continue to see all of the object
recorded in each one of its fragments. But the more the size of the
fragment diminishes, the less of a role the parallax effect will play. The
observer located opposite a small holographic fragment will only be
able to read it with a single eye just as the viewer located on the other
side of the door will only be able to observe the scene through the keyhole.
An infinity of details of the scene will thus be illegible.
Reduced to the size of a pinhole, a hologram will have characteristics
equivalent to those of a photograph.
Look closely.
A hologram imposes on the viewer the physical necessity of moving in
order to read it via its multiplicity of points of view. Reading a holographic
image implies a move by the viewer in space over a period of
time. The reading of a photograph demands, albeit for an instant, a
halt in the viewer’s attention to the fixed image.
The holographic viewer is dynamic whereas the photographic viewer
is static.
The multiplicity of points of view that are necessary for the reading of
a hologram implies a move of thought into the space-time of the representation.
The operation’s relative complexity will evoke questioning
and doubt in the viewer. The peculiarity of the photographic image is
of its being limited to a single point of view. Its intrinsic single voice
will invite the viewer to give it a clear, unique interpretation. The photographic
representation tends to convince the observer of the truthfulness
of the information that it conveys. The observer is invited to see
in the photographic representation what its author saw at the time the
image was recorded. In holography the operator’s eye cannot simultaneously
occupy all of the points of view of the scene that he is fixing
onto the sensitive plate.
Owing to the nature of the photographic medium, the theoretically
objective operator imposes his own perspective on me even if this was
manipulated.
In holography, the notion of objectivity on the part of the operator
loses its meaning.
The peculiarity of a photograph is to isolate a particular instant among
an infinity of other instants that are contiguous with it and which form
the flow of time.
The author of a photograph perforce seeks to convince us that he has
released the shutter of his camera at a privileged and significant moment,
one that is superior to the instants that preceded it.
The photograph, and, after that, the cinema, atomize space-time in a
linear set of separated visual instants.
The photograph seems to dominate the represented subject by freezing
it in its frame. It in turn asks you to subjugate it. The photograph
pressures you into taking part in the feeling of dominating the subject
that has been set onto the plate, a bit like the hunter’s stuffed trophy
tends to strengthen your feeling of superiority in relation to the slain
animal. The photograph appeals for communion between the operator,
the represented subject, and all viewers.
Do not go off and think that holography’s peculiarity lies in the threedimensional
aspect of its representations.
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