The Art of Ashes and Snow by Gregory Colbert
Ashes and Snow: Beauty and Poetry in motion
Gregory Colbert’s Ashes and Snow feature film captures extraordinary moments of contact between people and animals as seen through the lens of the artist’s camera on more than thirty expeditions to some of the earth’s most remote places. Written, directed, produced, and filmed by Gregory Colbert, it is a poetic field study that depicts the world not as it is, but as it might be—a world in which the natural and artificial boundaries separating humans from other species do not exist. The viewing experience is one of wonder and contemplation, serenity, and hope. To date, Ashes and Snow has attracted over 10 million visitors, making it the most attended exhibition by a living artist in history.
“I think of my life’s work as a celebration of all of nature, an orchestra that plays not the sounds of one musician, the music of one species, but rather an expression of all of nature’s songs.” ~ Gregory Colbert
Gregory Colbert’s Ashes and Snow is an ongoing project comprised of photographic artworks, a one-hour film and two short film “haikus,” and a novel in letters all presented in a purpose-built temporary structure called the Nomadic Museum.
Colbert’s images, visceral yet dreamlike, return us to a place we long for but cannot name. His photographs and films reawaken an ancient memory in us of a time when we lived in balance with our animal kin. Since we first painted their silhouettes on the walls of caves 35,000 years ago, animals have inhabited our stories, our dreams, and our imaginations.
Since 1992, Gregory Colbert has launched expeditions on every continent to collaborate with more than a hundred animal species and the people who share their native environments. His project has taken him to such places as Antarctica, India, Egypt, Burma, Tonga, Australia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania, Thailand, China, the Arctic, the Azores, and Borneo. Elephants, whales, manatees, sacred ibis, antigone cranes, royal eagles, gyr falcons, rhinoceros hornbills, cheetahs, leopards, African wild dogs, caracals, baboons, eland, meerkats, gibbons, orangutans, penguins, pandas, polar bears, lions, giant Pacific manta rays, and saltwater crocodiles are among the animals he has filmed and photographed.
Human collaborators include San bushmen, Tsaatan, Lissu, Massai, Chong, Kazakh eagle hunters, and people from other indigenous tribes around the world.
“In exploring the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals, I am working towards rediscovering the common ground that once existed when people saw themselves as part of nature and not outside of it. The destiny of whales cannot be separated from the destiny of man, and the destiny of man cannot be separated from the destiny of all of nature. I am exploring new narratives that help build a bridge across the artificial boundaries we have established between ourselves and other species.”
~Gregory Colbert
I have been tusked by an elephant, almost eaten by a sperm whale, knocked off my feet by a rhinoceros, embraced by a jaguar, given a haircut by a tiger shark, chased by a hippo and a black mamba, brought to my knees by malaria and dengue. But I was always able to avoid the greatest danger of all. Never stop exploring the things that open you, or that you love. ~Gregory Colbert
Edited by two-time Oscar-winner Pietro Scalia; narrated by actors Laurence Fishburne (English), Enrique Roche (Spanish), and Ken Watanabe (Japanese).
Musical collaborators include Michael Brook, David Darling, Heiner Goebbels, Lisa Gerrard, Lukas Foss, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Djivan Gasparyan.
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About Gregory Colbert:
https://gregorycolbert.com Photographer/filmmaker Gregory Colbert is the creator of the exhibition Ashes and Snow, an immersive experience of nature that combines photographic artworks, films, and soundscapes, housed in a purpose-built traveling structure called the Nomadic Museum. To date, Ashes and Snow has attracted over 10 million visitors, making it the most attended exhibition by any living artist in history. Colbert was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1960. He began his career in Paris in 1983 making documentary films on social issues.
His first exhibition, Timewaves, opened to wide critical acclaim in 1992 at the Museum of Elysée in Switzerland. For the next ten years, Colbert went off the grid and did not publicly share his art or show any films. He began traveling the world to photograph and film wondrous interactions between animals and humans. After ten years passed, Colbert returned to present Ashes and Snow at the Arsenale in Venice, Italy, in 2002.
With his debut, Photo magazine declared, “A new master is born.” The New York Times, in an article by Alan Riding, stated, “The power of the images comes less from their formal beauty than from the way they envelop the viewer in their mood. . . .They are simply windows to a world in which silence and patience govern time.”
