It’s not an easy time to be a holographer—a maker of images, crafted with laser light, that appear three-dimensional. A lot of the equipment needed has become cheaper and more readily available; at the same time, other costs, like the price of film, have gone up. What once seemed amazing can now feel tired; many people associate holograms more with security features on credit cards then with art. Many holography studios have closed up shop.The Museum of Holography, in SoHo, went out of business in 1992.

But, in a storefront on Twenty-sixth Street, a block or two from Bellevue Hospital, Jason Sapan’s Holographic Studios has stuck around for decades. Sapan’s gallery, which he opened in 1979, sits above a labyrinthine basement that houses the darkrooms and his hand-built holographic camera. In his gallery, holographic portraits of Andy Warhol, Phyllis Diller, and John Kenneth Galbraith are displayed alongside those of fictional characters like Superman, Lieutenant Worf, and Alfred E. Neuman.

Finding new clients can be tough; it is difficult to sell people on holograms rendered on two-dimensional media like photos and video. But, as Sapan notes, “when people stumble in here and have never seen holograms before, it’s amazing.”