Last May a friend, Kentucky artist Gayle Reynolds, pointed me to the dreamlike still and moving poetic images of Gregory Colbert at Ashes and Snow. I haven't managed to catch any of the physical exhibitions, but have kept drifting back to the web portfolio. Now, thanks to Jan, I have two of the eight books: #1 (elephants) and #8 (cats). Beautifully produced, small but perfectly formed, toned fine printing on heavy paper: voluptuous in themselves, quite apart from the images they contain.
I love books of photographs. In many ways I believe that the book, not the gallery wall, is the photograph's natural habitat. I have a fair number of original photographic prints on my walls, and wouldn't let one of them go, but it's the shelves full of books of photographs that hold the greatest concentrations of magic. These two are the latest members of a select and priceless community; neither of them have gone a day without being pulled out and handled, page by page, since they arrived.
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