Ashes and Snow: a Novel in Letters (English Language)

Ashes and Snow: A Novel in Letters by Gregory Colbert is the fictional account of a traveler who, over the course of a yearlong journey, composes 365 letters to his wife. The letters reveal the source of the title of both the book and the Ashes and Snow exhibition.

Ashes and Snow, a lifelong project for artist and author Gregory Colbert, originated in 1992 as a literary endeavor that soon inspired photographic artworks and an accompanying film. Colbert, like the character in his novel, composed the letters on more than thirty expeditions to such places as India, Burma, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Dominica, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tonga, and Namibia. The novel echoes many of the themes expressed in Colbert's images. Provocative, contemplative, and passionate, the letters chronicle an inward and outward exploration of memory and love. (The book collects 74 of these letters, as some were blown from the window or lost in transit. Blank pages in the novel sometimes represent the missing letters.)

Printed and bound in Italy on deckle edge Velata Biblos paper from Cartiere Magnani; hand-sewn binding; cover from handmade Nepalese paper sealed with natural beeswax; tied with tea-stained thread. Text in English.

Born in Toronto, Canada, in 1960, Gregory Colbert began his career in Paris in 1983 where he began making documentary films on social issues. Filmmaking led to fine arts photography. His first exhibition, Timewaves, opened in 1992 at the Museum of Elysée in Switzerland.

For the next ten years, Colbert did not show films or exhibit his art to the public. During this time, he completed extensive underwater work in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and traveled to such places as India, Burma, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Dominica, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tonga, Namibia, and Antarctica to film and photograph wondrous interactions between human beings and animals. Since 1992, he has launched more than sixty such expeditions to collaborate with elephants, whales, manatees, sacred ibis, Antigone cranes, royal eagles, gyr falcons, rhinoceros hornbills, cheetahs, leopards, African wild dogs, caracals, leopards, baboons, elands, meerkats, gibbons, orangutans, and other animals. Human subjects include Burmese monks, trance dancers, San people, and Colbert free diving with whales.

In 2002, Colbert presented the culmination of his singular work, Ashes and Snow, at the Arsenale in Venice, Italy, a twelfth-century 125,000-square-foot shipyard. It was the largest solo exhibition ever mounted in Italy. In spring 2005 the show opened in New York City in the first-ever Nomadic Museum. Ashes and Snow has since migrated in the Nomadic Museum to world capitals on four continents and has become the most attended exhibition by any artist in history.