A VENTURE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN
Despite my experience with wildlife subjects – films, two large TV series, large exhibitions and albums – I have not faced such a task yet. What is going on? Why do I emphasize that With Bated Breath is an exciting new venture that has not been seen before? There are several reasons.
- Never before has a single author created such a significant and thoroughly personal artistic statement on the heritage of the Białowieża Primeval Forest – so deeply considered, competent, comprehensive and at the same time multidimensional, and above all, moving with reflections and emotions.
- Never before has there been such a monumental project of art photography with elements of other arts, focusing exclusively on the life of the Białowieża Forest. No such – very personal – authorial portrait of the Forest has been created so far, with such a multi-thematic, extensive structure, composed of as many as eighty (!) autonomous forms – unconventional essays – gathered in four parts portraying the Forest.
- Although the naturalistic point of view is arch-important in this endeavor, this naturalness does not dominate over what is crucial for the author: over the aesthetics of nature – the art of studying from Nature. In no case does With Bated Breath pretend to be a documentary about the Białowieża Forest, although the portrayed contents obviously have a documentary dimension in the sense of a registration, a record of a moment from reality. With Bated Breath is first of all an artistic interpretation of the image of the rich life of the Białowieża Forest. This is an attempt to understand the essence of the miracle of life that has been going on there for millennia – through a sophisticated marriage of photographic and film images, complemented by sounds from nature, original music, words and other elements.
- This is the first time in the history of the Białowieża Forest that it has been presented in such an extensive, multimedia approach. Its life has not yet been shown through photography, film and sound in the form of: a) four specially constructed albums, b) twenty multimedia album e-books, c) eighty photo-film spots and several other forms – but in all these media at once, simultaneously!
- Also, probably never before in the case of the Białowieża Forest has only one author used in one project so many extremely different photographic means, as well as film means, including the highest quality shots, such as super-macro, infrared, aerials, time-lapse, very slow motion, even underwater and other authorial techniques developed for the purpose of this project.
Media elements of the With Bated Breath project
Until now, we have usually produced films, exhibitions and albums as separate forms. With Bated Breath is the author’s idea to create a new form of expression of still and moving image and sound, to discover new sources of aesthetics and emotions. Different elements and forms harmonize with each other here, creating one multimedia effect.
Transparent construction
At the heart of the project is an ESSAY – a single structural element. Each ESSAY builds a photographic and photographic-film story around the subject. It is at the same time narrative and impressionistic (emotional) – photographs and shots are composed into visual poems about wildness. In each ESSAY, there are several functional SCENES (equivalent to scenes in a conventional film), with subheadings.
The whole project With Bated Breath consists of 4 PARTS:
Part I. Immemorial,
Part II. Pulsating,
Part III. Magical,
Part IV. Civilized,
each of which contains 20 thematic ESSAYS. Together, it is as many as 80 ESSAYS!
For example: in PART I. IMMEMORIAL, there are 5 GROUPS, with 4 ESSAYS in each. Each ESSAY contains several thematic scenes with specific subheadings. The composition of GROUP 1 looks like this:
Part I. Immemorial
GROUP 1
ESSAY 1. APPARITIONS – GHOSTS OF THE ANCIENT FOREST
Scene 1. Phantoms
Scene 2. Signs from the past
Scene 3. The moments
Scene 4. Dreaming
ESSAY 2. I WOULD LIKE TO STOP THE TIME
Scene 1. If time stood still …
Scene 2. I seize time
Scene 3. The eternal source
Scene 4. The magic of primordiality
Scene 5. Backwoods
ESSAY 3. REFUGIUM VITAE
Scene 1. A priceless sanctuary of wildness
Scene 2. The last refuge
Scene 3. The asylum
ESSAY 4. COMPOSITION – A MAJESTIC MASTERPIECE OF THE MILLENNIA
Scene 1. Mosaic of environments
Scene 2. A living patchwork
Scene 3. A thousand faces of the primeval forest
To illustrate the vastness of the structure of the whole project, below I outline a schematic construction plan:
THE FRAMEWORK SCRIPT OF THE PROJECT With Bated Breath
Part I. Immemorial
GROUP 1
ESSAY 1.
ESSAY 2.
ESSAY 3.
ESSAY 4.
GROUP 2
ESSAY 5.
ESSAY 6.
ESSAY 7.
ESSAY 8.
GROUP 3
ESSAY 9.
ESSAY 10.
ESSAY 11.
ESSAY 12.
GROUP 4
ESSAY 13.
ESSAY 14.
ESSAY 15.
ESSAY 16.
GROUP 5
ESSAY 17.
ESSAY 18.
ESSAY 19.
ESSAY 20.
Part II. Pulsating
GROUP 6
ESSAY 21.
ESSAY 22.
ESSAY 23.
ESSAY 24.
GROUP 7
ESSAY 25.
ESSAY 26.
ESSAY 27.
ESSAY 28.
GROUP 8
ESSAY 29.
ESSAY 30.
ESSAY 31.
ESSAY 32.
GROUP 9
ESSAY 33.
ESSAY 34.
ESSAY 35.
ESSAY 36.
GROUP 10
ESSAY 37.
ESSAY 38.
ESSAY 39.
ESSAY 40.
Part III. Magical
GROUP 11
ESSAY 41.
ESSSAY 42.
ESSAY 43.
ESSAY 44.
GROUP 12
ESSAY 45.
ESSAY 46.
ESSAY 47.
ESSAY 48.
GROUP 13
ESSAY 49.
ESSAY 50.
ESSAY 51.
ESSAY 52.
GROUP 14
ESSAY 53.
ESSAY 54.
ESSAY 55.
ESSAY 56.
GROUP 15
ESSAY 57.
ESSAY 58.
ESSAY 59.
ESSAY 60.
Part IV. Civilized
GROUP 16
ESSAY 61.
ESSAY 62.
ESSAY 63.
ESSAY 64.
GROUP 17
ESSAY 65.
ESSAY 66.
ESSAY 67.
ESSAY 68.
GROUP 18
ESSAY 69.
ESSAY 70.
ESSAY 71.
ESSAY 72.
GROUP 19
ESSAY 73.
ESSAY 74.
ESSAY 75.
ESSAY 76.
GROUP 20
ESSAY 77.
ESSAY 78.
ESSAY 79.
ESSAY 80.
Basic elements
The structure described above is externalized by 3 BASIC FORMS:
PHOTOGRAPHIC AND FILM SPOTS
THE MOST SUGGESTIVE FORM, WITH A TASTY AND EXPRESSIVE, COMPLETELY NEW AUTHORIAL STYLE OF IMAGES AND SOUNDS (the whole is 4 parts of 20 SPOTS / ESSAYS – in total A SERIES of 80 SPOTS / ESSAYS, which is over 6 hours of screening!);
E-BOOKS IN THE FORM OF SCREEN ALBUMS
WITH ADDITIONAL FILM AND SOUND ELEMENTS (the whole is 4 parts of 5 E-BOOKS – a total of 20 E-BOOKS / 80 ESSAYS);
LARGE-FORMAT PANORAMIC CASE-ALBUMS
(the whole is 4 ALBUMS / 4 parts, 20 essays in each).
I anticipate other, additional forms, but I will talk about them in the future. All multimedia forms of the With Bated Breath project are simultaneously bilingual: English and Polish.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © JAN WALENCIK 2021. Except for permitted uses of protected works under international law, including permitted quotations, no part of project With Bated Breath may be used for any publication or exploitation without the written permission of the author and the copyright owner. This refers to the initial materials, ideas, scripts, as well as unfinished and finished works – elements of the project presented on www.zubrowa10.pl. The use of ideas, scripts and finished works published on this website for the purpose of imitating them in foreign works will be treated as plagiarism and will be prosecuted under the law.
SUPPLEMENT 2023
Unfortunately, in 2022, and earlier, from autumn 2021, I could not devote enough time to photographing the Białowieża Primeval Forest. The state of emergency in the border zone, and then the subsequent depressing months with the awareness of human dramas nearby, could not be a scenery in which I could create important, beautiful and sublime photographs. I really hope that 2023 will be much better in this regard. I will do my best to make up for last year’s losses, but perhaps because of them I will have to extend this huge project by one year. Who knows…
With the publication of the WITH BATED BREATH 2023 trailer on YouTube in January 2023 and the AUTHOR’S VISION 2023 trailer, I am initiating the resumption of work this year on my major bilingual project WITH BATED BREATH. 21st CENTURY BIAŁOWIEŻA FOREST: A SUBJECTIVE PORTRAIT 🌐 Z ZAPARTYM TCHEM. PUSZCZA BIAŁOWIESKA XXI WIEKU: PORTRET SUBIEKTYWNY.
WITH BATED BREATH 2023 trailer. Made by Jan Walencik. © ŻUBROWA 10 JAN WALENCIK 2023.