Picturing the Human: Religion and the Public Conversation

Connor Martini, anthropologist of religion interested in questions of presence, technology, and enchantment, will be in conversation with Jeremy Stolow about his new book, Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography (MIT Press 2025). Picturing Aura is an extended historical, anthropological, and philosophical study of modern efforts to visualize the hidden radiant force encompassing the living body known as our aura. This rich, interdisciplinary study chronicles the rise and global spread of modern instruments and techniques of picturing aura, from the late nineteenth century to the present day, exploring 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.