JESSICA ONI
Staff Writer
A towering edifice built out of rust-colored shipping containers recently took over a flat area of land adjacent to the Santa Monica Pier.
On the side of the building hangs a large white banner, and on it is a photograph of a boy, baldhead, eyes closed and chin up. From his shoulders stretch a gigantic pair of wings.
This photograph is one of more than 100 taken by Canadian photographer Gregory Colbert, on display in “Ashes and Snow,” an exhibit that runs through May 14.
Law student Amber McKinney came across the exhibit by accident one day while taking a bike ride at the pier.
“The structure is overwhelming,” she said. “But inside it’s very simple.”
The 2002 debut of Colbert’s Ashes and Snow at the Arsenale, a shipyard in Venice, Italy, marked the world’s first glimpse into the photographer’s decade-long journey across the globe to film and photograph humans in the environments of more than 40 species of animals.
“I am working toward rediscovering the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals,” Colbert said about his vision.
The images are so unusual that onlookers question its authenticity, even though the photographer said the photographs are real and not tampered with.
Three years after the debut, the exhibit’s permanent home was revealed at the show’s New York debut as the Nomadic Museum.
The temporary and easily reconstructed museum travels from site to site and is built out of 152 shipping containers.
It is the inspired creation of Japanese architect Shigeru Ban and will showcase the exhibit as it makes its way to venues around the world.
The building’s interior serves as a sharp contrast to its frame. Wooden walkways lined with pebbles are complemented by solemn, dramatic music and dim lighting as onlookers make their way down aisles of gigantic photographs.
In the context of Colbert’s photographs, eagles, falcons, whales, anteaters and elephants mingle with humans as though it were the most natural thing they had ever done.
McKinney said the most fascinating aspect of the exhibit for her was “how (the animals) respond to having a human there.”
The photographs, all of which are about the same height and width of 10 feet by 4 feet, hang from the ceiling, candid and unexplained.
The only light in the entire building comes from the spotlights which shine directly onto the photographs, bringing them to life.
One of the most memorable is a portrayal of a young boy, kneeling in front of a huge elephant in the middle of a desert, reading to him, as though he were telling a bedtime story to a little brother or sister.
Another depicts a child swimming in between two huge whales, as though he too, were some type of sea animal.
Old and young are depicted in conjunction with one another in photographs of children enveloped by their elders and vice versa.
Not only are humans depicted as dependent upon one another, they are also shown as heavily reliant on the uplifting hands, paws and fins of the wild beasts that surround them.
Rebirth is depicted in various baptismal scenes, as women are shown rising out of, or sinking into, bodies of water.
Though each photograph offers its own unique perspective into the reality of its subjects, certain elements repeat themselves throughout the exhibit.
All of the humans in the photographs have their eyes closed, as though they were in a state somewhere between sleeping and waking. Yet they all look peaceful and unafraid of their surroundings: A young boy lies on his back in the desert sand, as a cheetah rests on his stomach. A woman reads while orangutans look over her shoulder.
For those who believe the photographs to be too incredible to be true, Colbert offers the added credibility of videos, which document his subjects.
There is one hour-long video and a couple of 9-minute films, which stir up any emotion the photographs might have left dormant in viewers.
Senior E-shyh Wong said she didn’t buy the idea that animals and humans could coexist in the manner that Colbert portrays them in his supposedly un-staged photographs.
“You don’t know how much of it is manipulated,” she said. “They could have just been well-trained animals.”
In 2004, Colbert published “Ashes and Snow, A Novel,” which serves as a further supplement to the exhibit. The book is composed of a series of fictional letters a man wrote to his wife over the course of a year-long expedition, likely a metaphor for Colbert’s unending expeditions to capture humans and animals interacting around the world.
While KcKinney described the exhibit as a unique opportunity to experience a series of “unusual interactions,” Wong said it brought back memories of an encounter she had with an untamed creature not too long ago.
“I rode on an elephant this summer,” she said. “I felt bad for the elephant.”
In a citation on his Web site, Colbert said he “set out to explore the relationship between man and animals from the inside out.” The result is not merely an exhibit, but an experience.
“Ashes and Snow” is located directly next to the Santa Monica Pier. Tickets cost $12 for students, $15 for adults, and $12 for Santa Monica residents and senior citizens and can be purchased online or at the exhibit’s box office.
02-16-2006
