From 1999- 2008 I have traveled around the world using a bio feed back camera taking “aura photographs” of spiritual people. Since the Theosophists, Steiner, and Tesla there has been an interest by artists and scientists to capture the “aura”. Color theories based on these spiritual/scientific ideas and experiments had a profound influence on the modernists in the early 20th century, which formed the basis for how we look at and feel about color today. These ideas influenced me to embark on this project one hundred years later to investigate creatively how our relationship to color has transformed with new technologies.
I have taken over 900 aura photographs of people from different ethnic, and spiritual traditions around the world. These portraits include sadhus and holy women by the Ganges in Rishikesh, India, Tibetan refugees in the mountains of Dharamsala, Buddhist monks and dancers in the hills of Kyoto, Sikh families in Long Island and artists, healers and psychics in US, Germany and Canada. The bio feed back camera registers reads the thermal electrical touch from the body, which is transmitted into a small computer in the camera. The final result is a Polaroid portrait engulfed in color.
The Aura Project has been presented at:
Blur of the Otherworldly at Center for Art and Visual Culture, UMBC
Concerning The Spiritual in Photography at the Photographic Resource Center, Boston University
Collaboration with Takuji Kogo/ Candy Factory can be seen here
Publications include