Ashes and Snow

Imagine walking away from the Santa Monica pier and stepping into a dark, cool, and damp expansive new world. The smell of salt water and fresh wood is in the air, and you are housed inside a massive barn-like gallery, built entirely of metal crates which are stacked on top of each other in a checker-board pattern - the negative space creates depth in between the train-car-like crates.

Your mood is instantly transformed. Everything is quiet, except for the faint sounds of African music, drums and wood winds, and the gentle, slow rhythm of other visitors' feet pressing and lifting off of the wooden walkway built on the sand. Smooth gray rocks line the wooden walkway and rest underneath the photographs, and large blood-red metal pillars rise floor to 8-story tall ceiling of this new-fangled barn.

Creak, creak, creak sound your shoes as you proceed down the planks. On either side of you, works of art that change your body's composition: sepia toned photographs of the most amazing shots of man and animal suspended from wires that seem miles long, as if they are being dangled down from heaven, held in God's own hands.

On your left, there is a young African boy reading to an elephant. The elephant's posture convinces you he's hanging on every word uttered by the boy, his front legs are crossed, his eyes fixed on the little boy's face, which is completely tuned in to the words on the page. In front of him is a 1 ton elephant sitting inches the boy's 50 pound frame, but inside of him is an important story that he knows the elephant will understand.

Whatever the story is, there is peace between the photographer's subjects. There is a relationship between boy and elephant far too complex to put into words, but there are more than 1,000 I could use to try to explain what I felt when I experienced this picture and its companions.

Each image amazed me in a different way. A film of a man swimming with whales almost seemed normal and common after watching it for a few moments. A shot of a woman resting with a cheetah, with her eyes shut exuded a bond I never imagined possible between female and fierce feline. Another photo with a young girl sleeping in a canoe, and a monkey holding her head, with both of their hands dangling in the still water which their canoe drifts upon seemed like something Monet might have painted, as if it was a common everyday occurence. These images portrayed peace, love, and friendship between beings not normally depicted as pairs.

The artist, Gregory Colbert (coincidentally, my friend's neighbor in the Bahamas), spent over 10 years in Africa taking pictures of humans with elephants, cheetahs, and all sorts of other animals that were in THE LION KING movie who's names I can't think of right now.

Everyone should experience this exhibit. It's unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's more thereapeutic and more soothing than a trip to your shrink's office and Burke Williams in the same day.

http://www.ashesandsnow.org/en/portfolio/