An optical switch uses two ferroelectric liquid crystal spatial light modulators (10, 11) with an interconnect region in between. The switch uses bulk lenses (2, 8) to focus light from an input fibre array (1) to a first spatial light modulator (10), and from the second spatial light modulator (11) to an output array (9). Each spatial light modulator displays a respective hologram selected from a previously calculated set, to cause a desired switching of light from the input fibre array to the output array.