Tomasz Ogrodowczyk

Tomasz Ogrodowczyk about Włodzimierz Puchalski’s output

This year, Tomasz Ogrodowczyk will talk about the works related to recollection of Włodzimierz Puchalski’s achievements.

“Bezkrwawe Łowy (Bloodless Hunt) is the most important and famous book by Włodzimierz Puchalski. Its first edition was released in 1951 and became the beginning of a four-volume series called by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz: Zielona Seria (The Green Series).

In order to preserve the photographic and literary works of the outstanding wildlife photographer and filmmaker, The State Forests have decided to resurrect the memory of him by searching through vast antiques and dusty shelves and bring out the already forgotten publications of Puchalski. The book, more precisely a photo album with an audiobook, which years later appeared in the new form, is almost an exact reflection of the third edition of “Bezkrwawe Łowy” (Bloodless Hunt) from 1954, the one with the most of the photographs. The new edition has the thoroughly mapped original format of the cover and layout of black and white photographs. However, this is not a reprint. All the images have been scanned from the original negatives and a few prints. But the time has not been kind to these images and digital restoration proved to be essential, scratches and dirt were removed and missing details of the image were restored. The final result went beyond our expectations – images were rejuvenated. A dozen or so photos could not be found in the museum’s resources; therefore these were scanned from the original third edition of the book.

We corrected the manufacturing errors, including the shears at the edges of the essential elements of images, such as lapwing’s beak in the picture on page 57 that was cut to half. Moreover, without destroying the original layout, categorized images were finally arranged according to their assigned stories (originally these were mixed). This arrangement was formed according to the scans of the front pages of each story.

Why there are no full stories in the book? Following the latest trends we have decided to collect all 22 stories in the audiobook attached to the publication.

The text is divided into roles (there are four characters), played by well-known actors and lecturer. Thus, Włodzimierz Press played the role of Wlodzimierz Puchalski, Wiktor Zborowski played Gajowy Bartek, Wit Apostolakis-Gluziński played the role of Wacek and Wojciech Gąssowski was a narrator. In order to attract listeners to wildlife surroundings descriptions there were special sound effects added to recording.

“Wyspa Kormoranów” (The Island of Cormorants) (issued in October 2013) was renewed in a similar way, based on the second edition from 1957 – search for negative films, scanning, cleaning and restoration. Furthermore, there was a greater challenge in “Wyspa”, due to the amount of the roles to be played in the recording. Amongst the 30 characters there were eminent actors such as: Anna Seniuk,   Emilia Krakowska, Marian Opania, Stanisław Brudny, Jarosław Boberek, Grzegorz Pawlak, Jacek Zadura, Anna Apostolakis and obviously Włodzimierz Press starring as Włodzimierz Puchalski, and many young actors and my friends.”

Tomasz Ogrodowczyk

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