Picturing Aura
Book • 2025
The book chronicles the rise and global spread of modern instruments and techniques of picturing aura, from the late nineteenth century to the present day.
It explores how its images are put to work in the diverse realms of psychical research, esotericism, art photography, popular culture, and the New Age alternative medical and spiritual marketplace.
Pictures of auras are boundary objects that operate simultaneously in multiple conceptual and practical realms, serving varying goals of making art, healing bodies, and exploring the cosmos.
Drawing on extensive archival as well as field research, Stolow reconstructs a global history of this boundary-crossing enterprise through its evolving media technologies, markets, and cultural arenas.
It explores how its images are put to work in the diverse realms of psychical research, esotericism, art photography, popular culture, and the New Age alternative medical and spiritual marketplace.
Pictures of auras are boundary objects that operate simultaneously in multiple conceptual and practical realms, serving varying goals of making art, healing bodies, and exploring the cosmos.
Drawing on extensive archival as well as field research, Stolow reconstructs a global history of this boundary-crossing enterprise through its evolving media technologies, markets, and cultural arenas.
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, it examines modern efforts to visualize the radiant force encompassing the living body, known as our aura.

Jeremy Stolow

Jeremy Stolow, "Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography" (MIT Press, 2025)