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What is Kirlian Photography? Kirlian photography is a high voltage, contact print photography. Kirlian photography is named after Semyon Davidovich Kirlian and his wife Valentina who began their work with high voltage photography in 1939. Kirlian collaborated with his wife for over 30 years developing equipment and studying electro-photography. Kirlian's work was first made known to the general public in this country by a book published in 1970 by Shelia Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder titled "Psychic discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain". Kirlian work became so well know that the field of high voltage electro-photography is called Kirlian Photography. Although Kirlian wasn't the first to study electro-photography. The field of electro-photography can be traced back to the late 1700s. At this time Georg Christoph Lictenberg noted the pictures made in dust create by static electricity and electric sparks. Nicola Tesla (1880) photographed many corona discharges using his famous Tesla coil. In the early 1900s, Russian researcher Yakov Narkevich-Todka exhibited electro photographs he had made. A little later, Dr. F.F.
Strong of Tufts University Medical School used a Tesla coil to make electro-photographs of his hand.
Figure 1
Paranormal Claims
I was first introduced to Kirlian photography, by the book titled "Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain" by Shelia Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder in the early 1970's. In it many paranormal claims were made concerning the resulting Kirlian images. For instances, it was said that the Kirlian photograph could foretell illness in plants and animals before physical manifestations of the disease became apparent. I have experimented with Kirlian photography over the years. I have not observed any "paranormal" evidence of this phenomena. One must keep in mind that most observable Kirlian phenomena does not require any paranormal or bio-plasma field to be explained. For instance, stress or the "act of lying" can easily be detected with a lie detector that relies on measuring the change in a person's galvanic skin resistance. Stress may also be seen in a Kirlian photograph as a change in the corona discharge (aura), however this change is easily explained by the change in a person's skin resistance without the need of evoking any metaphysical properties.