Gregory Colbert's 'Ashes and Snow' Awakens Souls & Spirituality

One of my Facebook friends Chantal Simon shared this beautiful video, Danza Subacquea, inspired by photographer Gregory Colbert’s traveling photography project Ashes and Snow.

Danza Subacquea applies Colbert’s vision of humans and animals to men an women. Many spiritual people believe that men and women once lived in greater harmony with each other, before monotheism made man woman’s lord and master.

For many people, attending the Ashes and Snow exhibit is a life-changing experience. Seeing the exhibition twice in New York in 2005 impacted me so greatly that I weep at the mere sight of the Gregory Colbert images of elephants, cheetahs and hawks as spirit guides and message-bearers.

Gregory Colbert’s Ashes and SnowThese images were born in Colbert’s travels to Kenya, Burma, Egypt and India where the nomadic photographer captures more than 40 species interacting with humans. This 21st century bestiary was originally attacked as a photoshop con job, with critics saying that it’s impossible to find humans and animals coexisting in this way.

‘In discovering the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals,” Colbert notes, “I am working towards restoring the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals.’

Critics and big game hunters alike accused Colbert of romanticizing man’s relationship with nature and denying Darwinian laws of the jungle. Colbert agreed that these relationships between the animals and humans were cultivated —  over two years in some cases.

Colbert wants to share what is possible between humans and animals if we change our thinking.

Ashes and Snow Part 1

Ashes and Snow Part 2

I just wrote on my Facebook page that I do not go down on my knees with ease, but I do for the entire Gregory Colbert Ashes and Snow experience. My Cultural Creatives values were very much in transition at the time (2005), as I watched the impact of materialism on the world and here in America.

The ‘Ashes and Snow’ exhibit travels on the Nomadic Museum, launched in 1992 in Venice and subsequently traveling to New York, Tokyo, Santa Monica and Mexico City.  ‘Ashes and Snow, the most attended exhibition by a living artist in history, closed in Brazil in 2009. The exhibit will travel to a yet unnamed place in 2012.

My friends want me to take up meditation, which isn’t so much my style, although the health benefits can be enormous, to say nothing of the benefits of settling one’s mind. If I do take up meditation, than the Ashes and Snow mantra: ‘feather to fire, fire to blood blood to bone, bone to marrow, marrow to ashes, ashes to snow’ seems like an excellent chanting mantra.

Gregory Colbert pushed me over the edge with ‘Ashes to Snow’, into the ocean of universal connections and spirituality, and I have barely come up for air since. The article below was written on Jan. 1, 2008 after AOC was first born in June 2007 as my personal journal. Anne

‘Ashes and Snow’ | Gregory Colbert’s Cathedral To Life AOC Green Beings