Gregory Colbert (born 1960) is a Canadian filmmaker and photographer best known as the creator of Ashes and Snow, an exhibition of photographic artworks and films housed in the Nomadic Museum. Colbert sees himself as an apprentice to nature. His works are collaborations between humans and other species that express the poetic sensibilities and imaginations of human and animals. His images offer an inclusive non-hierarchical vision of the natural world, one that depicts an interdependence and symmetry between humanity and the rest of life.[1] In describing his vision, Colbert has said, '"I would define what I do as storytelling…what’s interesting is to have an expression in an orchestra—and I’m just one musician in the orchestra. Unfortunately, as a species we’ve turned our back to the orchestra. I’m all about opening up the orchestra, not just to other humans, but to other species.'"[2]
Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Colbert began his career in Paris in 1983 making documentary films on social issues. Film-making led to fine arts photography. Colbert's first exhibition, Timewaves, opened in 1992 at the Museum of Elysée in Switzerland to wide critical acclaim.
In 2000, he purchased the largest Polaroid camera in the world, the so-called 40 x 80 Museum Camera, which he purchased from the Polaroid Corporation and relocated to New York. Renamed "Moby C", it was used by Joe McNally in 2001 to make large format portraits in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center.[3] The photographs were exhibited under the name "Faces of Ground Zero — Portraits of the Heroes of September 11th".
Ashes and Snow
Long before its public debut, Ashes and Snow enjoyed the support of a devoted group of private collectors and key people in the art world. In an open letter dated March 1, 1995, Charles-Henri Favrod, Director and Curator of the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, wrote, "Ashes and Snow is written in the language of dreams….The exhibition and the film are not about ‘inventing’ new images of being ‘modern.’ Instead Colbert is trying to return the image to its purest state, to touch the heart, to enchant, to remember forgotten ideals, and to show that all truth and reality is classical and eternal."[4]
In 2002, Colbert presented Ashes and Snow in Venice, Italy. An April 9, 2002 review in The Globe and Mail stated, "Colbert unveiled Ashes and Snow, an exhibition of images and photographs unprecedented in both scope and scale. Covering 12,600 square meters, it is billed as one of the largest one-man shows in the history of Europe."[5]
In spring 2005, the show opened in New York City in the Nomadic Museum, a temporary structure built to house the exhibition. Ashes and Snow and the Nomadic Museum then traveled to Santa Monica in 2006, Tokyo in 2007, and Mexico City in 2008. To date, Ashes and Snow has attracted over 10 million visitors, making it the most attended exhibition by a living artist in history.[6]
Ashes and Snow has been a critical and popular success. Photo magazine declared, "A new master is born."[7][8]Ashes and Snow has been described as "extraordinary" by the Economist, and "distinctive . . . monumental in every sense" by the Wall Street Journal. Stern magazine declared that the photographs are "fascinating," and Vanity Fair described Gregory Colbert as "Best of the Best." An article in 2002 in the New York Times 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."[9]
Gregory Colbert’s Nomadic Museum is a purpose-built temporary structure imagined by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, used to house his traveling Ashes and Snow film and photography exhibition. Just as Colbert aims, in his films and photographs to depict a world without hierarchy between species, a place where there is no "other," he intends the Nomadic Museum to be inclusive, not elitist, a democratic expression of the wonder of nature that is accessible by visitors of all cultural and social backgrounds.
Nomadic Museum in Tokyo, 2007
To share his photographs and films, Colbert imagined a structure that could easily be assembled in ports of call around the world, providing an ephemeral environment for his work. He envisioned a building that would be the architectural equivalent of open arms, a place that would welcome rather than intimidate visitors, and would emerge seamlessly from the world of the images themselves. The Nomadic Museum resolves the disconnect that often exists between an artist’s work and the environment in which it is presented.
A review of the first Nomadic Museum in Modern Painter stated, "The Nomadic Museum restores the possibility of wonder to museums whose excesses of clarity and light have banished the shadows. The power of the show and the power of the building are so reciprocal that it is difficult to separate the dancer from the dance…In these agnostic and cynical times, the building becomes a place to feel and even believe. Ashes and Snow is a show that is disarmingly, and grandly, simple."[10] The Wall Street Journal commented, "His astonishing pictures—sepia and umber in tone…documented the whole caravan of beauteous creatures who had passed before his magic lens…For all its apparent sobriety, this is an ecstatic space; as for the installation, it is Zen…It’s like a Rothko chapel writ large."[11]
The Nomadic Museum is chartered to travel the globe with no final destination.
Awards
• "Best Curator of the Year" at the 2006 Lucie Awards.[12]
• Ashes and Snow was nominated for a special prize at the 2007 Venice Film festival.[13]
• Colbert was named the honorary ambassador of culture and tourism to Mexico in 2008.[14]
• In 2016, Colbert was honored to be named one of the World's Most Innovative People at the World Summit on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which was held at the United Nations as a partnership between with the United Nations Conference on Trade & Development (UNCTAD).[15]
Quotes
"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 able to avoid the greatest danger of all. Never stop exploring the things that open you, or that you love."[1]
"When I started Ashes and Snow in 1992, I set out to explore the relationship between man and animals from the inside out. In discovering the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals, I am working towards restoring the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals."
"Every culture from the Egyptians to the Mayans to the American Indians to the Bedouins created bestiaries that enabled them to express their relationship with nature. Ashes and Snow is a 21st-century bestiary filled with species from around the world. Nature’s orchestra includes not just Homo sapiens but elephants, whales, manatees, eagles, cheetahs, orangutans, and many others."
Related Research Articles
The Yeti is an ape-like creature purported to inhabit the Himalayan mountain range in Asia. In western popular culture, the creature is commonly referred to as the Abominable Snowman. Many dubious articles have been offered in an attempt to prove the existence of the Yeti, including anecdotal visual sightings, disputed video recordings, photographs, and plaster casts of large footprints. Some of these are speculated or known to be hoaxes.
Douglas Gordon is a Scottish artist. He won the Turner Prize in 1996, the Premio 2000 at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997 and the Hugo Boss Prize in 1998. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Cadborosaurus, nicknamed Caddy by journalist Archie Wills, is a sea serpent in the folklore of regions of the Pacific Coast of North America. Its name is derived from Cadboro Bay in Greater Victoria, British Columbia, and the Greek root word "saurus" meaning lizard or reptile.
Ryan McGinley is an American photographer living in New York City. McGinley began making photographs in 1998. In 2003, at the age of 25, he was one of the youngest artists to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He was named Photographer of the Year in 2003 by American Photo Magazine. In 2007, McGinley was awarded the Young Photographer Infinity Award by the International Center of Photography. In 2009, he was honored at The Young Collectors Council's Artists Ball at the Guggenheim Museum. A 2014 GQ article declared McGinley, "the most important photographer in America."
Zoomusicology is the study of the musical aspects of sound and communication as produced and perceived by animals. It is a field of musicology and zoology, and is a type of zoosemiotics. Zoomusicology as a field dates to François-Bernard Mâche's 1983 book Music, Myth, and Nature, or the Dolphins of Arion, and has been developed more recently by scholars such as Dario Martinelli, David Rothenberg, Hollis Taylor, David Teie, and Emily Doolittle.
The Icelandic Phallological Museum, located in Reykjavík, Iceland, houses the world's largest display of penises and penile parts. As of early 2020 the museum moved to a new location in Hafnartorg, three times the size of the previous one, and the collection holds well over 300 penises from more than 100 species of mammal. Also the museum holds 22 penises from creatures and peoples of Icelandic folklore.
The Iziko South African Museum is a South African national museum located in Cape Town. The museum was founded in 1825, the first in the country. It has been on its present site in the Company's Garden since 1897. The museum houses important African zoology, palaeontology and archaeology collections.
Elephant cognition is animal cognition as present in elephants. Most contemporary ethologists view the elephant as one of the world's most intelligent animals. With a mass of just over 5 kg (11 lb), an elephant's brain has more mass than that of any other land animal, and although the largest whales have body masses twenty times those of a typical elephant, a whale's brain is barely twice the mass of an elephant's brain. In addition, elephants have around 257 billion neurons. Elephant brains are similar to humans' and many other mammals' in terms of general connectivity and functional areas, with several unique structural differences. Although initially estimated to have as many neurons as a human brain, the elephant's cortex has about one-third of the number of neurons as a human brain.
The Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano is a museum in Milan, Italy. It was founded in 1838 when naturalist Giuseppe de Cristoforis donated his collections to the city. Its first director was Giorgio Jan.
Biomusic is a form of experimental music which deals with sounds created or performed by non-humans. The definition is also sometimes extended to include sounds made by humans in a directly biological way. For instance, music that is created by the brain waves of the composer can also be called biomusic as can music created by the human body without the use of tools or instruments that are not part of the body.
Ashes and Snow by Canadian artist Gregory Colbert is an installation of photographic artworks, films, and a novel in letters that travels in the Nomadic Museum, a temporary structure built exclusively to house the exhibition. The work explores the shared poetic sensibilities of human beings and animals. Ashes and Snow has traveled to Venice, New York City, Santa Monica, Tokyo, and Mexico City. To date, Ashes and Snow has attracted more than 10 million visitors, making it the most attended exhibition by a living artist in history.
Simón Vélez is a prize-winning Architect from Colombia, most famous for his innovative use of Guadua bamboo as an essential building component. Vélez was born in Manizales, Colombia, in 1949. His father and grandfather were also architects. He has designed buildings in over 11 countries.
The BBC Wildlife Specials are a series of nature documentary programmes commissioned by BBC Television. The series premiered in 1995, and 22 specials have been produced to date, with most of the more recent ones consisting of multiple episodes. The earlier programmes were produced in-house by the BBC's Natural History Unit, but the more recent Spy in the ... titles were made by the independent John Downer Productions. The first 18 specials, through 2008, were narrated by David Attenborough. Polar Bear: Spy on the Ice (2010), Penguins: Spy in the Huddle (2013) and Dolphins: Spy in the Pod (2014) were narrated by David Tennant.
Nick Brandt is an English photographer. Brandt's work generally focuses on the rapidly disappearing natural world, as a result of environmental destruction, climate change and humans' actions.
Jon Cone is a collaborative printmaker, pioneer and developer of photographic ink jet technologies, educator, and photographer. Cone is best known for the founding of the world's first digital printmaking studio, Cone Editions Press and developer of quad-black ink jet systems for printing fine black-and-white photographs including the first commercially available method of producing fine art black-and-white prints in the digital darkroom.
The Natural History Museum of Bern is a museum in Bern, Switzerland. In its teaching and research it cooperates closely with the University of Bern. It is visited by around 131,000 people yearly.
Yang Fudong is a Chinese contemporary artist. In the early 1990s, he began to work with film. He began creating films and videos using 35 mm film. Currently Yang directs films, creates photographs, and creates video installations.
Norma I. Quintana is a Puerto Rican American photographer and educator working in the tradition of social documentary. Quintana photographs with film, primarily in black and white using only available light. She is a founding member of the Bay Area nonprofit, Photo Alliance.
This is the discography for Australian musician Lisa Gerrard.
Giacomo Brunelli is a British/Italian artist working with photography, who lives in London.
References
1 2 Thaqafiyya, Afaaq (July 2012). "Manifesto for an Animal Spring". Shawati'.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
