David Bowie made Kirlian Photography
David Bowie made Kirlian Photography
On November 3rd 1975, David Bowie – in the final stages of recording his legendary album Station to Station – took possession of a strange Kirlian device. Bowie was at this time heavily into the occult; the artwork of Station to Station would feature an image of him sketching the Kabbalistic Tree of Life on the floor (I discussed Bowie’s esoteric interests in “Occult Rock: The Influence of Magick on Modern Music“), so this was no doubt a welcome gift.
he Kirlian device, given to Bowie by Dr. Thelma Moss at the Dept. of Parapsychology at UCLA, was a Kirlian Photograph Machine. It was based on technology developed over the past 75 years by Czech and Russian researchers that had not become popular in the West until the 1970s: the creation of images by placing objects on sheet photographic film sitting atop a metal discharge plate. When a high voltage was quickly applied to the object, it would create an exposure on the film via electrical coronal discharge.