Customer Reviews

West of Last Chance

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West of Last Chance offers up nothing more than thoughtful large format photographs of beautiful and rough country and the people and things inhabiting it, perfectly paired with spare and equally eloquent prose poems (though Haruf probably wouldn't call them that). I seldom write reviews, but this book, printed in Italy on luscious semi-matte paper, is well worth taking a moment to recommend - and making some time to read.

Rather than a prosaic description of the vastness of the plains, or a trite complaint about the environmental crises facing the land and its people, West of Last Chance reads (both Kent Haruf's words and Peter Brown's images) more like a long, meditative poem, spanning a huge narrative arc that includes the religious beliefs of the people, the remnants of (and occasional denigration of) its native American Indian inhabitants, the way the water, land and resources are sometimes thoughtlessly used and abused, and the economic hardships of fighting for a livable space in so vast and hard a world.

There's a fair amount of humor in the book too. Coming from a fairly small town in South Texas, I can promise you: the people in the book are the real thing. They are tough but often tender, and appropriately wise to the ways of their world. To someone who doesn't know rural America, it may be a real eye-opener that everyone in the sticks doesn't meet the stereotype. To those who do know small-town America, it will be a nice visit home. Peter Brown offers up some of the best documentary images (and by that I don't mean less than artful) of this rugged landscape and its equally rugged, poetic and just flat-out interesting people, that you'll find anywhere.

The writing is spare and understated and beautiful, which matches the subject perfectly. Stories are told, pictures are painted, points are made, but no lectures are given. It befits a finalist for the National Book Award (which Haruf was for Plainsong).

West of Last Chance was the result of Haruf and Brown winning Duke University's Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor prize, in 2005. I commend Duke for making an excellent choice and thank them for underwriting what has become a significant contribution to my photographic library. Do yourself a favor and buy the book.

West of Last Chance captures a place and time as few other books do. As a former resident of Montana, I was particularly struck by Haruf's words and how they played off against Brown's images. Like two very good jazz artists, each takes the essential melody of the High Plains, creates his own riff on it, and together create a dazzling duet. West of Last Chance

Like Kent Haruf I first came across photographer Peter Brown years ago through his excellent book 'On the Plains'. This latest book with 151 photos continues the theme with the same vigor and passion. I thought it was a wise choice to stick to the back roads of the Plains, so much more interesting visually than the cities. The photos really convey the hugeness of this area of the Nation though about a third of the photos are of small towns in Texas.

The photos that I think work best are of the buildings. Shot in the classic tradition stretching back to the FSA photos of the Depression: no-nonsense straight on at eye height and mostly they are framed in the composition, too. I would have been satisfied with the book with just the building photos. Brown's composition framing really does bring out the best in so many of the images. For instance there are a couple of wonderful shots taken in Buffalo, Wyoming (plates 118 and 119) that just grab when you turn over the page, full of shapes, color and what appeals to me: plenty of signage.

Throughout the book there are signs and lettering, again very reminiscent of the thirties FSA photos. Now, many photographers (in rather elitist thinking) would deliberately avoid photographing hand-made signs, billboards and commercial lettering but these seem such a part of America that I think it would be foolish to avoid them. Fortunately plenty of photographers go out of their way to capture this silent form of communication because of its visual appeal.

There was a possible interesting theme that could have made the book even more enjoyable: the center of town image. On page eighty-five Brown has positioned his camera in the middle of the main street in Apache, Oklahoma, to take a stunning shot looking to the horizon with the shops and other buildings diminishing into distance. To avoid the highway leaving a huge open space for a large part of the image there are a couple of vehicles filling up this area. I would have liked to have seen more of these in the book. In 'On the Plains' there was a similar wonderful photo but taken from the first floor of a building and looking down the center of Duncan, Oklahoma.

As with any book with over a hundred photos there are bound to be some duds but surprisingly few I thought. The pork producing plant in Yuma, Colorado (page ninety-one) makes a nice horizontal shapes of sky, building and grass but lacks sparkle for repeat viewing, the same for the yellow marked road on page fifty-three.

The book's production, like 'On the Plains', follows the classic photo book style with large images (in 175 screen) centered on the page with generous margins. It does though, have the typical photo book annoyance of placing all the captions on a back page, so plenty of page turning to find out where some place is. This does seem so unnecessary because on many pages there is text by Kent Haruf and a one line caption centered under each photo would hardly spoil the editorial flow.

West of Last Chance does a wonderful job of capturing the Plains with photos as unique as the places.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Much more than another gorgeous coffee table book, West of Last Chance begs to be read again and again. As you begin to decipher Brown's images and Haruf's words a sense of what the high plains, and perhaps by inference, what this country is all about emerges. Clearly the product of two artists with both a passion and a calling.

...and a must have for your library. If you have not yet cultivated an appreciation for the unique character of this place called the plains, you must pore over the pages of this remarkable book. It is up to each of us to decide what is to be called beautiful (I happen to be a lover of this part of the country), but I do know this - there is nothing more astonishingly beautiful than the honest way in which Peter Brown with his camera and Kent Haruf with his pen have expressed their affection for this place without imposing a bit of sentimentality on their audience. They have simply and respectfully allowed their subject to be what it is, and that is more than enough. You will not regret experiencing this book.

This is a gorgeous book. The text and imagery complement each other beautifully. I'm generally not a fan of landscape photography, but there is something so thoughtful and unique about these images that makes me want to look at them longer. I wasn't familiar with the writing of Kent Haruf before this book and I was blown away by it. I'll have to check out some of his novels.

Novelist Kent Haruf and Houston-based photographer Peter Brown have found a terrific way to entice us into sharing their love for America's flat land. This is NOT a sentimental or predictable gathering of visual and verbal cliches. Haruf is from the Colorado high plains and knows it with the intimacy of an insider. Brown,originally from the Northeast, brings the eye of the infatuated outsider, delighting in the long views denied to those raiseed in the mountains. There's narrative sweep here, but Haruf and Brown won't just give it to you--you'll have to put in your own effort to appreciate both the book and its subject. Get it. Give it.

West of Last Chance
Kent Haruf has long been one of our favorite fiction writers, and we love Peter Brown's sensitive photography of the majesty of the West. In this book the two combine and show us the 'beauty', not necessarily the 'pretty' of the high plains.
Reading this book, prose and images, makes one want to go out there, get off the Interstate, and wander the back roads to also be able to see what they show. An America that we have feared lost to urban and exurban growth.
This book is a song to the West.

This book is about the interaction of man and land. It is simple and yet profoundly touching. The images show the stark beauty of the land, and how it has, at times, been abused by man. It is a storybook of what the land has witnessed throughout the years - events of use, misuse, and sometimes even crime. And, it tells you how a land can change a man by its harshness or its beauty.
In these pages the reader will see that Peter Brown, and Kent Haruf have created a beautiful, moving, and altogether unique book.

As a landscape photographer, I am rarely satisfied with the ability of film to capture the true essence of a place. Generally, the experience of being in a place cannot be matched by the two dimensional field of a photograph. This is not true of West of Last Chance, the truly remarkable collaboration of Kent Haruf and Peter Brown. They have described the land, the culture and the relationships of the people on it with such clarity and depth, I feel as though I have been given an opportunity to see it with a new and fresh understanding. Kent Haruf's precise and evocative language and Peter Brown's remarkable images capture life on the high plains with insight, intelligence, and sensitivity.