aura

What is aura? A strange web of time and space: the unique appearance of a distance, however close at hand. On a summer noon, resting, to follow the line of a mountain range on the horizon or a twig which throws its shadow on the observer, until the moment or hour begins to be a part of its appearance-- that is to breathe the aura of those mountains, that twig.

-- Walter Benjamin, from "A Short History of Photography" in Artforum 15
Translated by Phil Patton