Paul D. Barefoot
Paul D. Barefoot
President:Holophile, Inc.
Paul Barefoot saw his first hologram in New York at the International Center of Photography exhibition, Holography '75: The First Decade, produced by Jody Burns and Posy Jackson. It was there that he caught "Holography Fever."
Within months, he moved to New York from his hometown of Charlotte, NC, where he was Director of Marketing for a graphic arts company and a C130 pilot with the North Carolina National Guard. In November, 1975 he founded Holophile, Inc. to market holography to corporations and nonprofit clients. He also began an affiliation with John Bliss Associates, Inc. (later, Bliss, Barefoot & Associates, Inc.), who served as Public Relations counsel to the Museum of Holography from its inception in 1976.
In 1977, Barefoot worked with Museum of Holography founder, Rosemary Jackson, to organize a traveling exhibition of the Museum's inaugural exhibition, Through the Looking Glass. It opened in Toronto and traveled to art, science and children's museums throughout the U.S. Public response was overwhelmingly positive.The exhibition was booked with institutions continuously for ten years -- not returning to New York until its retirement in 1987.
During that time, Barefoot took Looking Glass to Australia for an appearance at the Adelaide Festival of Arts, and to Jerusalem where it broke the all-time attendance record at the Israel Museum
In1988, Barefoot began circulating the Museum's second traveling exhibition, FutureSight: Innovations in Art Holography. This exhibition, curated by Rene Barilleaux, traveled to art museums and galleries in the U.S., plus a tour of four New Zealand museums in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
In 1992, Barefoot organized a new traveling exhibition entitled, The Nature of Holography. A second show (of the same name) was developed in 1993 to meet the growing demand by art, science, and children's museums. A third exhibition, Holography: Making Faces, was introduced in 2007. These exhibitions, which feature images from the Holophile Collection, are still in circulation. (See complete listing of host institutions since 1977, http://www.holophile.com/html/exhibit.htm)
Since founding Holophile in 1975, Barefoot has worked as a producer of custom holograms for use by corporate, not-for-profit and government clients, including The American Gas Association, BP Oil de Venezuela S.A., Canary Islands Tourism Board, The Coca Cola Company, IBM, National Security Agency (NSA), M & T Chemicals, Inc., PricewaterhouseCoopers, Samsung Electronics, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Raytheon Canada, Ltd and The Weizmann Institute of Science.
Barefoot continues to work in holography and other three-dimensional imaging technologies through his company, Holophile, Inc. (http://www.holophile.com), located in Killingworth, CT.