Park Place: Out West

$40.00 U.S. (trade discount)
E-book TBD.
Hardcover
112 pages with 63 tritone photographs by the author
ISBN: 978–1–938086–94–6
11.875″ x 9.5″ landscape/horizontal

Published May 2023
Distributed by Casemate/IPM
 www.casemateipm.com
Published in association with Furthermore, a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund, and the Center for the Study of Place.

ABOUT AUTHOR
PRAISE
SLIDE SHOW

Included on Brad Zellar’s Photobooks of 2023 list

Book Information Sheet (pdf)

by David Heberlein
Afterword by Scott Herring

Designated a Favorite Book of 2023 at photo-eye!

2024 Next Generation Indie Book Awards: Travel/Travel Guide Winner

The National Park Service was established by an act of Congress in 1916 “to conserve the scenery and historic objects and wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” This directive to protect wilderness yet provide accessibility to it without somehow compromising the integrity of the natural resources can be a self-fulfilling contradiction and an arena for conflicting priorities.

In Park Place: Out West, photographer David Heberlein explores the tension between access to and enjoyment and preservation of America’s national parks and public lands. For nearly three decades he traveled throughout the American West—from the Badlands to the Pacific Coast and Hawa’i—and explored 35 of its famous national parks, monuments, preserves, historic sites, and recreation areas. His stunning photographs, made in the course of his many journeys, document the human presence within the nation’s natural wonders. In particular, they allude to the human influence through the marks we make on the land—whether temporary or permanent—and the way park visitors experience nature and perform a variety of sightseeing activities. These shifting scenarios provide a compelling photographic survey of the many roles that national parks, monuments, and landmarks play and the foundational need to balance the human impact on nature with the preservation of wild and historic places.

Park Place: Out West features sixty-three tritone photographs by Heberlein along with his introductory essay and an engaging afterword by Scott Herring, who has written extensively on national parks. The book is a welcome addition to the 150-year-long tradition of photographers, scientists, artists, and writers heading out West to see, explore, record, and interpret America’s national treasures.

About

Photograph by Brett Kallusky.

About the Author
David Heberlein is a professor emeritus from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, where he taught art and photography for 33 years. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Minnesota History Center; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Plains Art Museum in Moorhead, Minnesota; Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; and Wisconsin Historical Society. His photographs have also appeared in numerous publications, among them EXTRAordinary—American Place in Recent Photography (Madison Art Center, 2001); Wisconsin Then and Now, the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Rephotographic Project (University of Wisconsin Press, 2001); Minnesota In Our Time: A Photographic Portrait (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2000); Metroscapes (University of Washington Press/Weisman Art Museum, 1998); and Another Look: Wisconsin Photographs Past and Present (Wisconsin State Historical Society Press, 1998). His Website is www.davidheberlein.com.

About the Contributor
Scott Herring is a senior continuing lecturer in the University Writing Program at the University of California, Davis, and the author of Lines on the Land: Writers, Art, and the National Parks (University of Virginia Press, 2004), Rough Trip through Yellowstone: The Epic Winter Expedition of Emerson Hough, E. Jay Haynes, and Billy Hofer (Riverbend Publishing, 2014), and Yellowstone’s Lost Legend: Uncle Billy Hofer, Renaissance Man of the Early Park (Riverbend Publishing, 2020).

Slide Show

Praise

“In Park Place: Out West Heberlein does something against the grain: he takes America’s greatest success, its most serious totem, its very best idea . . . and pokes a little fun. Exploring over decades—and often with his family—the great American National Parks, Heberlein casts an eye through vacation photos not on the vacation but the vacationer; turning and turning in a widening gyre over the West, he turns his falcon-eye not to the marvel of the land but the humans that mar it. … It is, perhaps, one of the most enjoyable books of American nature photography ever made—poking fun at its viewer and its creator alike…”
—B.A. Van Sise, author and photographer for Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry (Schaffner Press, 2019) (review for New York Book Journal)

“Heberlein’s debut monograph collects his b/w photos of American national parks made over the course of road trips between 1992 and 2019. “My parents instilled in me a love of travel, of being adrift,” he explains in the intro. Lucky him, the wanderlust stuck through adulthood. All sites are in western states. Since the parks are naturally photogenic, his pictures have a majestic quality in the rough tradition of Ed Weston or Ansel Adams. They can’t help it. But, unlike those purists, Heberlein was interested in people too. Almost every photo includes human activity, either in the form of park visitors or infrastructure. Distant roads are a common element in several images, while others make good use of interpretive signs for comic effect. In many photos he takes up position directly behind park visitors, juxtaposing sweeping views with bystander posteriors. These might be a commentary on tourism, voyeurism, or perhaps a form of meta-selfie. Not sure, but in any case the whole book has a witty spirit, which lifts it above the great boring mass of calendar-ready nature photography. Throw in a nice feel for serendipitous composition, and the book can surprise. Pictures from Death Valley and Mount St. Helens, for example, layer odd shapes across space with Friedlanderish precision. The printing is great, and the production is top-notch.”
—Blake Andrews, photographer and blogger

“David Heberlein’s Park Place: Out West offers a fresh meditation on the complex relationship between humans and what we term ‘wilderness.’ This quest for proximity to the natural world has led us to seek out the wild, yet we do not wish to leave behind our creature comforts. Heberlein’s wry photographs reveal our longing to be a part of, instead of apart from, nature. Often cloaked in humor or irony, these images are emblematic of our hunger for natural vistas coupled with our collective fear of destroying the planet, as if to experience it for the last time.”
—Michelle Van Parys, Professor of Art Emerita, College of Charleston, and author of The Way Out West: Desert Landscapes

“The American wilderness, if it ever truly existed, is long gone. The health of planet Earth has been severely compromised by human actions, but, as seminal landscape photographer Mark Klett has reminded viewers for decades, there is still so much beauty. And the human desire to go adventuring and to experience the wonders of the world with our own eyes and feet continues on. Especially if there is good parking and decent restrooms. Heberlein’s elegant and gently humorous photographs wonderfully capture the moment in which we find ourselves, burning fossil fuel to get out into the landscape and take selfies in sanctioned scenic spots. Yes, the saguaros are interspersed with utility poles, but he doesn’t begrudge us the thrill of discovery on our own terms. Park Place: Out West is a distinctive contribution to the ongoing dialog about the human relationship with nature and a reminder to all of us to get up off the couch and see what’s out there!”
—Katherine Ware, Curator of Photography, New Mexico Museum of Art, and author of Earth Now: American Photographers and the Environment and Man Ray, 1890–1976

“Over many years, I’ve watched David Heberlein patiently pursue a visual examination of a particular western place. The idea of those places as preserved acreage of wilderness runs counter to the position of them as theme parks. Within that dichotomy Heberlein has focused on the ‘act of looking,’ offering moments of quiet discovery and wry incongruities. That he has accomplished this with grace and insight is a testament to his photographic skills and his tenacity.”
—Wayne Gudmundson is Professor Emeritus of Photography, Minnesota State University Moorhead, and author of The Prairie Post Office: Enlarging the Common Good in North Dakota, Thirty Poems to Read to Beginning Photography Students, and A Song for Liv

My Place

Heberlein family 1959. The author is next to his father.

“People think that geography is about capitals, land forms, and so on. But it is also about place—its emotional tone, social meaning, and generative potential.“
—Yi-Fu Tuan, “Belonging to This Place: A Conversation with Yi-Fu Tuan” (2013)

Rootedness and a Sense of Place

It is impossible to talk about places that have influenced me without acknowledging my formative years growing up in the small town of Fennimore, Wisconsin, in the Driftless Area. My parents, Joy and Arnie, in different ways, shaped my childhood and subsequently my adult life.

Yi-Fu Tuan, the distinguished geographer, makes a distinction between rootedness and sense of place. Rootedness implies familiarity through long residence, a kind of stability that, subjectively, can be defined as an incuriosity towards the larger world. Sense of place, on the other hand, indicates a distancing of self from place, allowing for a different kind of encounter with place.

Dad exemplified the definition of rootedness. He was raised in a house one small city block (less than 100 yards) to the east of where our family lived. The first 62 years of his life, he left Fennimore only twice for an extended period. The first was to serve overseas in World War II and the second to attend the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Rootedness, in addition to being a long tenure in one place, is also a psychological state of mind. Around 1950, Fennimore’s main street had four thriving enterprises: a jewelry store, a hardware store, an auctioneering service, and my dad’s drugstore—all owned and operated by Heberleins. My father felt a great deal of pride and responsibility in upholding the tradition that went with the family name. The drugstore firmly anchored our family to this place. He worked there six and one-half days a week for 35 years. His sense of place was rooted within the boundaries of the drug store—to the particulars of retail pharmacy and a rigid schedule determined by the clock. I worked in the drugstore from an early age, learning many routines and responsibilities.

Mom shared with me a very different understanding of place. She grew up in a far-western suburb of Chicago. The move from a larger metropolitan area to a small agricultural-based town in southwestern Wisconsin was difficult for her and took some adjustment. She raised all of us (four boys) while dad worked in the store. Despite being anchored to the house and domestic duties, Mom always made time for me. She taught me how to cook and play the piano. She encouraged spontaneity and exploration, provided unstructured time to examine my world—to visually daydream.

Happily, my parents provided me two distinctly different models about the meaning of place. My father’s rootedness, his attachment to the pharmacy in his hometown, provided a sense of stability and security. I attribute my love for the darkroom, in some measure, to those years spent working at the drugstore. Conversely, my mother’s patience and curiosity introduced a world to me that my father, obviously, could not provide. I was fortunate to combine both perspectives into rewarding careers as a teacher and artist.

Copyright © 2022 David Heberlein. All rights reserved.