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 and his first exhibition, Timewaves, opened in 1992 at the Museum of Elysée in Switzerland and the Parco Galleries in Japan.

For the next ten years Colbert showed no films and exhibited none of his art. Since 1992, he has launched 33 expeditions to such places as India, Burma, Sri Lanka, Egypt, the island of Dominica, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tonga, Namibia, and Antarctica to film and photograph the wondrous interactions between human beings and animals. Animals photographed included elephants, sperm whales, manatees, sacred ibis, antigone cranes, royal eagles, gyr falcons, cheetahs, leopards, African wild dogs, caracals, leopards, baboons, elands and meerkats. Human subjects included Burmese monks, trance dancers, San people, and Colbert free diving with sperm whales.

In 2002, Colbert presented the culmination of his singular work, Ashes and Snow at the Arsenale in Venice, Italy, a thirteenth century 125,000-square-foot shipyard. Attended by more than 100,000 people, it was the largest solo exhibition ever mounted in Italy. The show contained 130 images up to 10 feet in length on sheets of hand-made Japanese paper and a one-hour film. With the New York opening of Ashes and Snow in March 2005, the exhibition will begin its migration around the world in the first-ever Nomadic Museum. Ashes and Snow has no final destination and new species will be continually added. Each exhibition will simply be a port of call.

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