Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

I am interested in the concept of the aura as it relates to art. The aura being "the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be." How is an artist able to communicate something personal while maintaining a certain distance from the artwork? I think this distance allows for the viewer to more easily create meaning for himself or herself. When viewing a reproduced image of a painting, the aura is not present as it is when viewing the original artwork. Benjamin further uses the idea of distance to compare the painter to the cameraman by using a similar analogy of the magician and the surgeon. The magician heals by maintaining a certain distance between himself and the patient while the surgeon heals by penetrating the distance between himself and the patient. The work of magician/painter maintains the aura while the surgeon/cameraman penetrates the aura. While it may be easy to answer which way one would prefer to be healed, it is not so easy to state whether painting or film making creates a "better" or more complete image of the original.