An aura

What is an aura, in fact? A gossamer fabric woven of space and time: a unique manifestation of a remoteness, however close at hand. Lying back on a summer's afternoon, gazing at a mountain range on the horizon or watching a branch as it casts its shadow over the beholder, until the moment or the hour shares in the manifestation -- that is called breathing in the aura of those mountains, that branch.

-- from Brief history of photography by Walter Benjamin. (1931)