Ashes and Snow

A screenshotman sinks through water as an elephant swims above him. A cheetah and a solemn young boy perch on a rock. A girl and an ape balance at the tip of a canoe, both reaching toward the still river. These images and others - not one of them digitally composed or altered - are the startling work of photographer Gregory Colbert.

Showcased in the traveling exhibition Ashes and Snow, this "21st century bestiary" currently makes its home in the Nomadic Museum, a structure built of hundreds of steel cargo containers just for Colbert's menagerie. The museum debuted at New York's Hudson River pier last year and currently welcomes visitors at the Santa Monica Pier in California.

His astonishing pictures - sepia and umber in tone, luxuriously produced at a scale of approximately 6 by 9 feet by an exacting encaustic process (involving beeswax, pigments and the application of heat) - documented the whole caravan of beauteous creatures who had passed before his magic lens: Burmese monks reading their sutras attended by Asian elephants, a dancer in Egypt's Valley of the Queens winged by a Royal eagle, San bushmen of Africa snuggled up to cheetahs and meerkats.

In one incredible sequence, Mr. Colbert himself appeared underwater, a buff yogi in harem pants and pony tail, free-diving (or, as he prefers to say, "dancing") with 55-ton sperm whales. Adding to the wonder, all the stills were single frames, captured in real time, free of the digital trickery we have come to take for granted. At the far end of the gallery, an hourlong film dissolved such magic moments into a slow-flowing Amazon of dreams.

Gregory Colbert has spent thirteen years filming and photographing elephants, whales, birds, and other animals in such places as India, Burma, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Namibia, Egypt, the island of Dominica, Tonga, and Antarctica. Ashes and Snow, Colbert's lifelong project, is a collaboration with animals in their natural habitat as they interact with human beings. His images attempt to remove the boundaries between humans and other species—to re-awaken in us an understanding of our shared animal nature.

With no final destination set, it may arrive some day in your hometown. In the meantime, Ashes and Snow, and its family of beasts and humans, awaits you online.

New comment:

Name:
Comment:

• About Notelay
• Advertise
• 
• 
•