Bob Collins
For sheer beauty, your next 365 days in Minnesota are covered, thanks to Jim Brandenburg, who has unveiled an ambitious project to document some of Minnesota’s beauty every day this year.
On the project’s website — Nature 365 — Brandenburg says he’s been collecting video clips over the years while photographing the northwoods.
There were themes that kept presenting themselves to me – like the resident wolf pack that over the years learned to trust my presence. The wolf is a recurring subject, perhaps more than any other. In their trust, secrets were revealed to my camera that were not known, even to science. Then on occasion I entered into another world and encountered a ghost from the past in the name of a Native American spirit. Those that lived a natural existence here for centuries before me have left a strong presence. I felt their presence and knew it was appropriate to include that spirit.
The seasons would usually slide into their nearly imperceptive rhythm and other times the land transformed overnight. The magic of living and embracing the grandeur of wild nature is heightened by dramatic weather changes that can leave city dwellers unbalanced. Nature has become the enemy to many. That is a dangerous condition.
I have tried to project the miracle as I saw it. A translation of the unknown gift we often don’t understand or even see. I hope the message was received and understood, better yet felt. For that I would be honored; the land and its creatures would be eternally thankful.
He gave the clips to Laurent Joffrion, who is the director on the project.
“He said, ‘Oh my God, there’s a movie here,’ ” Brandenburg told Forum Communications. “I gave him 3 terabytes of 10 to 12 years of stuff — prairie and northwoods, from TV specials that I’ve worked on, assignments from the Japanese, BBC, you name it. One day, he said, ‘Jim, I’ve got an idea,’ and it was this idea. I respected him and liked him, but I didn’t know what to think about it — one minute a day for 365 days.”
