Ashes and Snow, Gregory Colbert
An elephant with his trunk raised is ladder to the stars. A breaching whale is a ladder from the bottom of the sea.These images are a ladder to my dreams. These letters are my ladders to you.
“If you come to me at this moment,
your minutes will become hours,
your hours will become days,
and your days will become a lifetime.”
(Ashes and Snow, Gregory Colbert)
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
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 he began creating his singular work of Ashes and Snow in 1992, Colbert has undertaken filming and photographic expeditions to every continent to collaborate with more than one hundred species around the world. Colbert, who calls animals “nature’s living masterpieces,” photographs and films both wild animals and those that have been habituated to human contact in their native environments. There is no digital collaging. The images record what he saw through the lens of his camera. While Colbert uses both still and movie cameras, the photographic images are not taken from the film.
His original Ashes and Snow photographic artworks marry umber and sepia tones in a distinctive encaustic process on handmade Japanese paper. Each work, approximately seven feet by twelve feet, is mounted without commentary to encourage an emotional rather than an intellectual response to the images.
An elephant does not see his trunk as merely a nose. It is also a trumpet. Colbert believes people tend to see cameras only as a device to take photographs. He sees cameras as musical instruments that can be played by the human eye.
The feature film was edited by two-time Oscar winner Pietro Scalia. It is narrated by Laurence Fishburne (English), Ken Watanabe (Japanese), Enrique Rocha (Spanish), and Jeanne Moreau (French). Musical collaborators include Michael Brook, David Darling, Heiner Goebbels, Lisa Gerrard, Lukas Foss, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Djivan Gasparyan.
The title Ashes and Snow refers 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.
Ashes and Snow first opened at the Arsenale in Venice, Italy, in 2002. The Nomadic Museum, the traveling home of Ashes and Snow, debuted in New York in 2005 and then migrated to Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Mexico City, and is charted to travel the globe with no final destination. Ashes and Snow has welcomed more than ten million visitors to date, making it the most attended exhibition by any living artist in history.
To the princess of the elephants,I disappeared exactly one year ago. On that day I received a letter. It called me back to the place Where my life with the elephants began.
Please forgive me for the silence between us has been unbroken for one year. This letter breaks that silence. It marks the first of my three hundred and sixty five letters to you;one for each day of silence. I will never be more myself than in these letters. They are my maps of the bird path,and they are all that I know to be true.
——
You will remember everything. All will be as before. In the beginning of time,the skies were filled with flying elephants. Every night they lay down in the same place in the skyand dream with one eye open. When you gaze up at the stars at night, you are looking into the unblinking eyes of elephantswho sleep with one eye open, to best keep watch over us.
——
I gaze upon all the Edens that had fallen in me. I saw Edens that I had held in my hands but let go of. I saw promises I did not keep ; pains I did not soothe, wounds I did not heal, tears I did not shed. I saw deaths I did not mourn, prayers I did not answer,doors I did not open, doors I did not close, lovers I left behind,and dreams I did not live. I saw all that was offered to me, that I could not accept. I saw the letters I wished for, but never received. I saw all that would have been, but never will be.
——
An elephant with his trunk raised is ladder to the stars. A breaching whale is a ladder from the bottom of the sea.These images are a ladder to my dreams.These letters are my ladders to you.
——
My heart is like an old house,whose windows have not been opened for years. But now I hear the windows opening. I remember the cranes floating above the melting snows, of the Himalayas, sleeping on tails of manatees. The songs of the bearded seals. The bark of the zebra. The trill of the tree-frogsThe clicks of the sand. The ears of the caracals. The sway of the elephants. The breaching of the whales. And the silhouette of the eland. I remember the curl of the meerkats’ toes. Floating on the Ganges. Sailing of the NileAscending the steps of Dharma (?)
I remember wandering through the corridors of Hatshepsutand the faces of many women. Endless seas and thousands of miles of rivers.
(…)
I remember everything. Bu I do not remember ever having left.
Remember your dreams. Remember.
——
The longer I watch the Savannah elephants, the more I listen, the more I open. They remind me of who I am. May the guardian elephants hear my wish to collaborate with all the musicians of nature’s orchestra. I want to see through the eye of an elephant. I want to join the dance that has no steps. I want to become the Dance.
——
I can’t tell if you’re getting closer or farther away. I long for the serenity I felt when I looked upon your face. Perhaps if your face could be returned to me now, I will find it easier to recover the face I have seem to lost–my own.
——
Feather to fire. Fire to blood. Blood to bone. Bone to marrow. Marrow to ashes. Ashes to snow.
——
The whales do not sing because they have an answer. They sing because they have a song.
——
What matters is not what is written on the page. What matters is what is written in the heart. So burn the letters and lay their ashes on the snow at the river’s edge. When spring comes, and the snow melts, and the river rises,return to the banks of the riverand reread my letters with eyes closed. Let the words and the images wash over your body like waves. Reread the letters with your hand cupped over your ear. Listen to the songs of Eden, page after page after page. Fly the bird path. Fly Fly Fly…
—***—
Comments