At 32 years old, French nature photographer Jessica Buczek has embarked on an ambitious year-long project to document Europe's last remaining primary forest: the Białowieża Forest, which stretches across the border between Poland and Belarus. The photographer, originally from the Loire region of France, first discovered this ancient woodland in 2019 and has been captivated by its untouched beauty ever since.

Buczek's journey into photography began at age 14 in the Pilat Regional Park, but it was her first visit to Białowieża that truly changed her perspective. She had just won the Iris-Terre Sauvage grant, which enabled her to create her first photo series in the forest. Despite becoming a mother in the intervening years, she couldn't shake her desire to return to this extraordinary place. "It was love at first sight," Buczek explains. "It's extremely rare to be able to contemplate a forest where you can find 26 different tree species. We always felt so small when facing these giants."

The Białowieża Forest is a natural sanctuary that has been preserved since the end of the last ice age nearly 12,000 years ago, spanning 150,000 hectares across both sides of the Polish-Belarusian border. Buczek loves to wander randomly through the forest, searching for remarkable trees that are sometimes several centuries old. The forest is home to maples, oaks, lime trees, spruces, birches, and aspens, creating a diverse ecosystem unlike anywhere else in Europe.

During one of her explorations, Buczek stopped before a hornbeam tree to demonstrate the forest's unique characteristics. "This is one of the trees we observe most easily here," she explains. "You can see that the inside of the tree is completely hollowed out. You can even put your hand through one side and it comes out the other. It's complicated to capture in images, but yes, I have some ideas in mind where you can see the completely hollow tree with daylight passing through the trunk, while the tree is still very much alive."

Beyond the ancient trees, Buczek is passionate about photographing the forest's mammals, including deer, roe deer, foxes, wolves, and most notably, the European bison, which reign as kings of the Białowieża Forest. During one memorable evening, several female bison and a calf blocked her path home, forcing the photographer to spend an entire unprepared night in the forest, hoping to photograph them at dawn. "At daybreak, I looked through the camera viewfinder a first time. I saw nothing. A second time. I saw nothing. The third time, I was certain there was nothing left. So the eight bison, plus the calf, had disappeared in the middle of the night, without making a sound!" she recalls.

Approximately 1,500 bison live on both sides of the border, but like other mammals in the forest, they suffer from the geopolitical tensions affecting the territory. Polish authorities erected a 5.5-meter-high wall in 2022 to combat the massive influx of migrants, who were being used as pawns by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. This barrier is currently being reinforced due to the war in Ukraine. "We see many trucks passing by that are clearly heading to a construction site for a road at the border," Buczek observes. "These comings and goings have an impact both on the forest and on all the life it shelters. We notice behavioral changes in certain animals that tend to shift their activity to nighttime hours."

The militarization of the border coincides with the continued arrival of migrants seeking passage through the forest. "When you walk in the forest regularly, you come across boots, coats, pants, backpacks, cake wrappers, plastic bottles, phone cards," Buczek notes. "I discovered this forest with a completely amazed perspective. For me, it was a dream to come here. And today, I think about all these people who made this crossing through the forest with completely different prospects. What matters is an easing of tensions, that the situation here improves."

Despite these challenges, Buczek continues her tireless documentation work, with the possibility of publishing a book in the coming months. Her project serves as both an artistic endeavor and a testament to the importance of preserving Europe's last primary forest ecosystem. Through her lens, she captures not only the natural beauty of Białowieża but also the complex human and political realities that threaten this ancient wilderness.