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.