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Gregory Colbert, a modern myth-making photographer and filmmaker, has spent the last 14 years of his life on far-flung expeditions to shoot (with lenses) dozens of species interacting with humans.

Over the years, he has captured in his viewfinder: Asian elephants, sperm whales, royal eagles, cheetahs, meerkats, sacred ibis, orangutans and saltwater crocodiles, among other exotic and endangered species, in their native habitats and countries. Colbert believes that nature doesn’t have a style – it has a voice.

In 2002, he began sharing that voice through Ashes and Snow, an ongoing project that weaves together photographic works, three 35mm films, art installations and a novel in letters. The latest alighting (which closed in May and then headed to Tokyo) was at the Santa Monica pier in California, built in association with Gensler and its design team of David Gensler, project principal, and Irwin Miller, project director.

Part of what makes Colbert’s odyssey so continually interesting is that it’s continually evolving. At every stop, the exhibition hall is different and different work is shown. The first show opened in Arsenale, a 125,000-square-foot shipyard in Venice, where 100,000 people visited the exhibit over a three-month period. The second stop of his show was in 2005 in New York at Hudson River’s Pier 54, where he unveiled the Nomadic Museum, the traveling home of Ashes and Snow created by the inventive Tokyo architect Shigeru Ban. Even though the location was difficult to access (well-known to people in this industry as the sight of the old NADI shows), 500,000 people attended. In California, the site was adjacent to the historic 1909 Santa Monica piers, and measured 56,000 square feet, an exponential expansion from its New York version.

The Nomadic Museum is constructed according to principles of postindustrial design, utilizing recycled, reusable materials. Colbert had envisioned “a museum that would engage the people, the art and the location itself in a conversation.” At the same time, he wanted to build a sustainable structure that would be in harmony with the environment.

 

The walls are ingeniously created by the use of steel cargo containers (each measuring 10-by-20 feet). When mounted 34 feet high in a checkerboard pattern, they create an enigmatic façade. A fabric-like membrane allows for some breezes to filter through, contributing to an art-safari feeling.

Visitors enter through a temple-like series of columns, allowing a dramatic vista down the whole central boardwalk with a film screen at the end. A 60-minute film (narrated by Laurence Fishburne) shows clips of animals and humans seemingly entranced by each other.

The oversized photographs themselves are printed in sepia tones on mural-sized pieces of textured Japanese paper. Interior spaces feature diaphanous curtains made from one million pressed Sri Lankan teabags.

Dramatic lighting plays a big role in the reverential mood of the interior. In contrast to typical museum standards, this space is not over-lit, but actually sculpts light and shadow, plays with object and void. Spotlighting on each image casts dramatic oblong eclipse shadows that echo the solid-void pattern of the walls. The rocks that flank the boardwalk add visual texture to the severe minimalism of the interior and also manage foot traffic to designated areas.

 

While architect Ban has created many notable paper structures for museums like The Museum of Modern Art and the United Nations for Rwanda refugees, here he uses paper tubing. The central peak of the roof is created by ingeniously detachable tubes of different diameters reaching 54 feet. These tubes not only support the roof, but provide the armatures for the nearly invisible cable installation system, thus creating the illusion that the images are free-floating in space.

At the end of the visitor’s journey is a bookstore with natural lighting and a recycled-paper wall display system constructed by Silverstream (made offsite and then popped together in less than 16 hours). It is separated from the exhibition by a playful serpentine wall of paper tubing. The bookstore in Santa Monica averaged $60,000-80,000 in sales a day, not to mention the entrance ticket sales – uniting not only human and animal but also art and commerce.

Photography: Michael Moran, New York

 

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