Exploring the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals.
Ashes and Snow, a film by Gregory Colbert, uses both still and movie cameras to explore extraordinary interactions between humans and animals. The 60-minute feature is a poetic narrative rather than a documentary. It aims to lift the natural and artificial barriers between humans and other species, dissolving the distance that exists between them.—Ashes and Snow
Photographic artworks by Gregory Colbert that explores the natural interaction between man and other animals. Since 1992, Colbert has undertaken more than 30 expeditions to such far-flung locales as India, Egypt, Burma and Kenya to photograph the interaction between humans and other animals. The culmination of those expeditions, Ashes and Snow, premiered in 2002 at the Arsenale in Venice, Italy, to a record 100,000 visitors, making it the largest solo exhibition ever mounted in that country.—Anonymous
Since 1992 photographer and filmmaker Gregory Colbert has collaborated with more than 40 species around the world to create a 21st-century bestiary. These images attempt to express the world not only through human eyes, but also through the eyes of a whale, an elephant, a manatee, a meerkat, a cheetah, or an orangutan.—Anonymous
Ashes and Snow, a film by Gregory Colbert, uses both still and movie cameras to explore extraordinary interactions between humans and animals. The 60-minute feature is a poetic narrative rather than a documentary. It aims to lift the natural and artificial barriers between humans and other species, dissolving the distance that exists between them.
Ashes and Snow was edited by two-time Oscar-winner Pietro Scalia. It is narrated by actors Laurence Fishburne (English), Ken Watanabe (Japanese), Enrique Rocha (Spanish), and Jeanne Moreau (French). Narrations are forthcoming in Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, German, and Italian. The musical collaborators include Michael Brook, David Darling, Heiner Goebbels, Lisa Gerrard, Lukas Foss, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Djivan Gasparyan.
The DVD is packaged in brown covers that are handmade in Nepal, and sealed with natural beeswax. They are tied with thread stained with tealeaves and a Nepalese bead.
The film is one component of the international exhibition Ashes and Snow, an installation of photographic artworks, films and a novel in letters. The show travels in the Nomadic Museum, a temporary structure built to house the exhibition, and has visited Venice, New York, Santa Monica, Tokyo and Mexico City. To date, Ashes and Snow has attracted more than 10 million visitors, making it the most attended art exhibition in history. Ashes and Snow at the Nomadic Museum is next scheduled to open in Brazil in 2009.
The title Ashes and Snow suggests beauty and renewal, while also referring to the literary component of the exhibition-a fictional account of a man who, over the course of a yearlong journey, composes 365 letters to his wife. The source of the title is revealed in the 365th letter. Colbert's photographs and this film loosely reference the traveler's encounters and experiences described in the letters, fragments of which comprise the narration in the film.
Gregory Colbert was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1960. He began his career in Paris in 1983 making documentary films on social issues. Filmmaking led to fine arts photography. His first exhibition, Timewaves, opened in 1992 at the Museum of Elysée in Switzerland.
For the next ten years, Colbert did not exhibit his art or show any films. Instead, he traveled to such places as India, Burma, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Dominica, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tonga, Namibia, and Antarctica to film and photograph wondrous interactions between human beings and animals.
Since 1992, he has launched more than sixty such expeditions. Elephants, whales, manatees, sacred ibis, Antigone cranes, royal eagles, gyr falcons, rhinoceros hornbills, cheetahs, leopards, African wild dogs, aracals, leopards, baboons, elands, meerkats, gibbons, orangutans, and saltwater crocodiles are among the animals he has photographed. Human subjects include Burmese monks, trance dancers, and other indigenous tribes from around the world. To date, Colbert has collaborated with over 130 species.
