The Aura of Nature

Outside reading: Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

“We define the aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow over you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch” (p.434).  

In Benjamin’s essay, he discusses the idea of aura (defined in the quote above) applying it mainly to the area of art but using nature as another example. He explains aura as the space and time that art occupies and the reverence that we have when we encounter a work of art. This idea of aura is incredibly intriguing to me, almost a recognizable feeling when I reflect on times when I have stood in wondrous places. I think this concept of aura sheds light on our infatuation with “the real thing.” This seems to apply to almost every facet of life: we want an authentic brand, we want to go the place where something memorable happens, we want to see a piece of artwork in real life. Particularly in nature, a photograph does not ever do it justice. There is a difference between seeing a picture of the Grand Canyon and standing on the edge of it, gazing at its beauty, and being in awe of its vastness. There is something very human about this idea of aura and I wonder if it has something to do with the history of what we are gazing upon. When we look at the Grand Canyon, we are participating in a landscape that humans beings for thousands of years have looked upon. There is something universal about this aura – perhaps if I stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and feel this reverence of aura, someone else before me felt the same thing, and someone else before that person, so on and so forth. Thus, being in nature has the potential to be more participation than simply viewing, participation in the grander human narrative.