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. Beatific teenage monks bow before elephants at temples on the plain of Pagan in the former Burma. A nearly naked daughter of the African bush, her hair in exquisite cornrows, leans dreamily into the flank of a watchful cheetah in the Namibian desert. [Saw that on the PATH. It annoyed me.] The muscular, ponytailed Mr. Colbert, wearing a sarong, dives with sperm whales, plays hide and seek with a manatee, and swims in deep water with an elephant.

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.