Dictionary:
Kir·li·an photography (kîr'lē-ən)  |
[After Semyon Davidovich Kirlian (1900-1980), Russian electrician, and his wife Valentina Khrisanovna Kirlian (died 1971), Russian journalist, codiscoverers of the electric effect upon which it is based.]
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Definition
Kirlian photography creates a photographic image by placing the object or body part to be photographed on film or photographic paper and exposing it to an electro-magnetic field.
Origins
Although experiments with photographing objects exposed to an electrical field are known to have been carried out as early as the 1890s, Kirlian photography is generally said to have originated with the work of a pair of Soviet scientists, Semyon and Valentina Kirlian, beginning around 1939. Over the next several decades at Kazakh State University, the Kirlians developed electrophotographic techniques that used neither a lens nor a camera. By the 1960s, their work had attracted public attention in the Soviet Union. Interest in Kirlian photography spread to the West during the 1970s, where attempts were made to replicate effects achieved in the photographs of Alexei Krivorotov, a well-known psychic healer in the U.S.S.R. In the United States, studies were carried out with psychic healers at the Jersey Society for Parapsychology and the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.
Benefits
The most common therapeutic use of Kirlian photography is as a diagnostic tool. Variations in the shapes, colors, and intensity of the images produced are said to provide clues to the patient's overall health and energy level and to indicate the presence or absence of disease, specific emotional states, and other physiological or psychological conditions.
Description
Practitioners most often photograph the patient's hand (or, less frequently, the foot), which rests on a photographic medium placed over an electrically charged metal plate. During the approximately one-minute exposure, the patient may feel tingling in the exposed surface. After developing the image, the practitioner interprets its significance and if necessary, refers the patient to a healthcare provider for treatment. Kirlian photography is also sometimes used to assess the effectiveness of treatments (such as acupuncture) by comparing before and after photographs of the patient.
Research & General Acceptance
Although some have speculated that Kirlian photography actually records the aura long said by some mystics and psychic healers to exist around human beings, this is not a generally accepted viewpoint. A scientific explanation of these dramatic images is that they result from interactions between charged particles created by the electromagnetic field used to form the images. A 1976 Science article concluded that moisture is a principal determinant of the form and color of human Kirlian photographs.
It has also been noted that variations in a variety of factors, including the amount of pressure on the plate, the voltage and frequency, and the exposure time, moisture, and temperature, can all influence the images produced.
For these reasons, as well as claims of unreliability and a lack of research data supporting its use, Kirlian photography is not recognized as a legitimate diagnostic tool by the mainstream medical community.
Nevertheless, individual practitioners and researchers continue to experiment with Kirlian photography for diagnosis, especially in Russia and Eastern Europe. It has also been used for such nonmedical purposes as detecting flaws in metal and determining the viability of seeds.
Resources
Books
Woodham, Anne, and Dr. David Peters. DK Encyclopedia of Healing Therapies. New York: DK Publishing, 1997.
Periodicals
Stanwick, M. "Aura Photography: Mundane Physics or Diagnostic Tool?" Nursing Times (June 1996): 19-25.
[Article by: Peter Gregutt]
| Photography Encyclopedia: Kirlian photography |
In the early 1940s Seymon and Valentina Kirlian developed a process of recording on film corona discharges from living matter. The method of obtaining the photograph (more properly, photogram) is to position a metal plate in contact with one side of the film, and some part of the subject's body (usually the fingers) on the other. The subject is earthed, and the plate is charged to a high potential with a Tesla coil. The film records the corona discharge from the subject resulting from the ionization of the surrounding air. Such discharges can be affected by temperature, humidity, and other environmental factors, and this has led to a large number of pseudoscientific claims about ‘auras’ and ‘biofields’. There is evidence that the image does indeed change according to the emotional state of the subject, and this has been linked by enthusiasts to ‘bioenergy’, ‘astral bodies’, and other paranormal phenomena. However, a much more likely cause of the variation is simply changes in skin conductivity.
— Graham Saxby
See also occultism and photography.| Wikipedia: Kirlian photography |
Kirlian photography refers to a form of photogram made with a high voltage. It is named after Semyon Kirlian, who in 1939 accidentally discovered that if an object on a photographic plate is connected to a source of high voltage, small corona discharges (created by the strong electric field at the edges of the object) create an image on the photographic plate.[1]
Kirlian's work, from 1939 onward, involved an independent rediscovery of a phenomenon and technique variously called "electrography", "electrophotography", and "corona discharge photography". The Kirlian technique is contact photography, in which the subject is in direct contact with a film placed upon a metal plate charged with high voltage, high frequency electricity.
The underlying physics (which makes xerographic copying possible) was explored as early as 1777 by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (see Lichtenberg figures). Later workers in the field included Nikola Tesla; various other individuals explored the effect in the later 19th and early 20th centuries.
Kirlian made controversial claims that the image he was studying might be compared with the human aura. An experiment advanced as evidence of energy fields generated by living entities involves taking Kirlian contact photographs of a picked leaf at set periods, its gradual withering being said to correspond with a decline in the strength of the aura. However it may simply be that the leaf loses moisture and becomes less electrically conductive, causing a gradual weakening of the electric field at the drier edges of the leaf. In some experiments, if a section of a leaf was torn away after the first photograph, a faint image of the missing section would remain when a second photograph was taken. The Archives of American Art Journal of the Smithsonian Institution published a leading article with reproductions of images of this phenomenon.[specify] James Randi has suggested that this effect was due to contamination of the glass plates, which were reused for both the "before" and "after" photographs.[2]
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In addition to living material, inanimate objects such as coins will also produce images on the film in a Kirlian photograph setup. In the United States, Dr. Thelma Moss of UCLA devoted much time and energy to the study of Kirlian photography when she led the parapsychology laboratory there in the 1970s. Much of her time was devoted to efforts to avoid factors proposed by skeptical peer-review.[3]
Also, in the 1970s psychologist Joe H. Slate Ph.D. led research at Athens State University under the United States Army Aviation and Missile Command as project, "Kirlian Photography" (Featured in the History Channel's Vampire Secrets).
Current research continues by Dr. Konstantin Korotkov[4] in the Russian University, St. Petersburg State Technical University of Informational Technologies, Mechanics and Optics. Dr. Korotkov has published several books.[5] He uses GDV (Gas Discharge Visualization) based on the Kirlian Effect. GDV instruments use glass electrodes to create a pulsed electrical field excitation (called "perturbation technique") to measure electro-photonic glow.[6]
The Korotkov methods are used in some hospitals and athletic training programs in Russia and elsewhere as preventive measurements for detecting stress. The Russian Academy of Science has approved the GDV techniques and equipment in 1999 for general clinical use,[6] though it should be noted that the "approval", according to the certificates Dr. Korotkov himself is showing in his various web sites, only covers conformity with general electrical safety (standards 61010 and 61326).[7]
There has been some published research in peer-reviewed scientific journals regarding GDV and related material, including several articles in the Journal of Applied Physics and in IEEE articles.[8]
The accepted physical explanation is that the images produced are those typically caused by a high voltage corona effect, similar to those seen from other high voltage sources such as the Van de Graaff generator or Tesla coil. In a darkened room, this is visible as a faint glow but, because of the high voltages, the film is affected in a slightly different way from the usual. Color photographic film is calibrated to faithfully produce colors when exposed to normal light. The corona discharge has a somewhat different effect on the different layers of dye used to accomplish this result, resulting in various colors depending on the local intensity of the discharge.[9]
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Copyrights:
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Alternative Medicine Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine. Copyright © 2005 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Photography Encyclopedia. The Oxford Companion to the Photograph. Copyright © 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Kirlian photography". Read more |
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