from ashes and snow, 2002
Gregory Colbert
Photographer Gregory Colbert’s striking images of animals interacting with people have appeared in various venues since 2002; up next is a Tokyo exhibition, starting in March 2007. Colbert’s work is not collaged or altered, which makes these graceful convergences of human and animal form more remarkable than they may first appear.
It’s interesting that such simple and elegant photos are surrounded with a cocoon of hype. Colbert has published a series of attractive books and exhibition catalogs, but they’re pricey, apparently because he elected to have them handbound in imported papers. Fair enough; expensive art books aren’t new. But his exhibition spaces are also over the top, featuring faux-temple architecture and towering reproductions of his photos. When ashes and snow visited New York in 2005, the Times reviewer called it “spectacularly vacuous.” Ouch! Apparently the use of eco-friendly materials to construct the venue wasn’t enough to redeem it.
Luckily, you can see Colbert’s photos in a less baroque setting, as virtual books at the Codex ashes and snow website. The web presentation keeps things simple, framing the photos as if they were pages in vintage travel journals. This slows the viewer down - you can only flip the virtual pages so fast - and renders the photos eerily filmlike, as closely related frames dissolve into one another. The Codex moves a little too slowly (reminding me of the sad days of dialup) but if you have half an hour to spend browsing, it’s beautiful work.
On the other hand, there is still that pervasive travelogue aesthetic, which prompted the Times to comment,
Mr. Colbert’s sepia-toned images prove once again that while colonialism may be dead or dying, its tropes are ever with us. In these pictures, beautiful non-Western women and children interact with exotic animals in faraway places and at revered ancient sites. . . Many of these images are striking for their simplicity, serenity and how-did-they-do-that? drama. Who doesn’t love majestic animals, or ”nature’s masterpieces,” as Mr. Colbert calls them? But you would barely think twice about these photographs if you saw them framed under glass in a Chelsea art gallery. They’re too derivative.
They take us back to nature along the familiar routes of fashion photography, spare-no-expense ad campaigns and National Geographic cultural tourism. They evoke Richard Avedon’s 1955 fashion classic ”Dovima With Elephants,” Irving Penn’s images of stoic Peruvian peasants, images of the young Dalai Lama and bus stop posters for expensive spas. They hark back to the 19th century, when early photographers traipsed the globe to record the alien glories of empire for the folks back home, and the early 20th, when Isadora Duncan was photographed dancing among Greek ruins.
There’s little I can add to that. The concerns about colonialism are valid. In the Codex, I was struck by the pages which contain no photos, only woodblock prints of apparently Asian characters. To me, these pages are unintelligible; no translation is given, even though the website is clearly intended for English-speaking viewers. The text is presumably expressing something, and I’d rather appreciate those insights than the decorative but inarticulate symbols. I’m interested in the cultures whose artifacts and human representatives are depicted in the photos, but I wonder sometimes if those cultures’ perspective is coming through at all, or if they’re simply window-dressing.
On the other hand, even if Colbert’s work is not stunningly original, it is lovely, and (I believe) respectful. It may romanticize the exotic, but at least it publicizes it; millions of people saw Colbert’s shows in New York and Santa Monica. Accessible depictions of nature like these can make people think seriously about our place in the network of life. I just hope that awareness lasts long enough to prompt visitors to do something about conservation.
February 3rd, 2007
This post has nothing to do with science or art. I just want to toss some information out there for my fellow iPod users. When a friend recently bought an ipod nano, I realized I’d better warn him about a few things, and if I was going to do that, I might as well write a post for any one else who cares.
In a nutshell: do not let your nano get wet! This may seem fairly obvious, but in addition to not immersing your nano in the toilet, or the swimming pool, or the river (which I almost did once), you should avoid exposing it to rain or sweat. Don’t let it get even the slightest little isty-bitsy tiny bit damp.
I have to disclose that I adore my 4GB nano, which I bought almost one year ago. I run every day, so it’s on for at least an hour, usually more. (At one point I estimated that I spend 1/12 of my life listening to my nano, which is just alarming). I don’t bother with an armband - I just drop the nano in my pocket. It weighs so little, I don’t even feel it. Wonderful flash technology! If it completely dies tomorrow, I will be satisfied that I got my money out of it and immediately go buy another one.
But I’m sentimental about this nano, and when it started to fail a few months ago, even though it was still under warranty, I wanted to save it (and didn’t want to wait two weeks for a refurbished replacement to be shipped back). The problem? It started giving an error message - “Firewire not supported” - and freezing up, even when it wasn’t plugged in. It did so while I was using it, when I wasn’t using it, when it was asleep on the table - all the time. After the error message appeared, it would remain on continuously until the battery died. Even if I could coax it into responding by resetting it, so I could change playlists and access the menu, it seemed to have lost the ability to “go to sleep.” The battery was taking a beating. Wiping and reinstalling the software via iTunes was only a temporary fix. A quick check of the hard drive indicated it was fine. The USB cable was not the problem, nor was the USB port, and the nano had never in its life been plugged into a firewire port.
So I did some internet research and discovered that this has happened to other people, with the commonality seeming to be water. Some poor little nanos had even been left in the rain! My nano, in contrast, is babied - it’s hardly ever out of my sight. It has never been exposed to water, except for a little workout-induced sweat, or the ambient humidity outside on cloudy days. But just in case that was the problem, I did the same thing I did to a wet Sony Walkman eight years ago: I baked it.
I put the nano a few inches above a heat vent, tilted with the pin end up, and left it there until it seemed probable that the hypothetical water would have evaporated (two days). Then I reset it (holding down the clickwheel) and reinstalled the software. I baked, reset, reinstalled three times consecutively, which seems like absolute voodoo, but it worked. It’s been over two months and I haven’t seen the Firewire error again.
Now, obviously this is not an Apple-approved fix, so use it at your own risk, etc. The main point I’d like to make is that it apparently is not ok to have moisture, even invisible moisture, near the nano’s exposed metal pins. This is a problem, because most skins don’t cover the pins; if they did, you’d have to remove the skin to charge it. So even though my nano was always in a skin, its pins were unprotected. If the pins are so sensitive, I wish that Apple would provide some sort of plug to cover them. You have to expect an mp3 player to get sweaty!
Instead of a skin, I’ve gone back to using the flimsy grey pocket-shaped slipcover that came with my nano. Since I don’t use an armband, it’s not an inconvenience, except that the pins are on the same end as the earbud jack, so to protect the pins, I have to double the earbud cord back and out the top of the slipcover. Very nonoptimal (are you listening, Apple?). I’m lucky I kept the slipcover at all - my friend threw his away immediately upon buying his nano, because he thought it was cheesy (it is).
After all of this, I will still buy another nano when this one dies. I love the damn thing, and I enjoy running so much more now that I have it. But this does seem to be a problem that’s worth a little preventative effort up front. HTH.
February 3rd, 2007
I thought I’d check before reading any further in Blogging the Bible to see how much I really had forgotten. Unfortunately, this quiz is so silly, I think 86% is a rather poor showing. Oh well. Although I may not remember which book follows Colossians, I can spell Strom Thurmond’s name.
You know the Bible 86%!
Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!
Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes
via Pharyngula (of all places!)
February 3rd, 2007