National Parks Posters
Artist and Photographer Robert Decker Creates Beautiful WPA-Style Posters Enshrining Iconic Views of America’s National Parks
There are, at the time of this writing, 63 official National Parks. Each has its own treasures: endless landscapes, unreal formations of rock, towering trees, lofty peaks, dense subtropical jungle, and glistening glaciers, to name but a few of the highlights to be found in these spaces called by author Wallace Stegner America’s “best idea we ever had.”
Yes, you have to see these spaces in person to truly appreciate the awe and majesty, but as close a runner-up to that as possible is to behold some of the artwork created by Robert Decker, a man uniquely suited to render America’s National Parks in art for two reasons: first, Decker has been a photographer and graphic artists since he was a child. Second, he has been visiting — and cherishing — these parks since his youth as well. And actually, let’s add a third reason: Decker had, by the time Dad Gear Review caught up with him for a chat about his National Park Posters project and his life’s work beyond it, visited nearly every single one of the nation’s official National Parks. There are a few still on the list; we’ll get to those soon enough.
First, let’s get into our chat with Rob Decker.
How did you first get into photography and graphic design? When did it become clear that art and images could be more than a hobby for you, but a career?
“So I started it in photography when I was a kid 10,000 mile cross-country trip with my family when I was eight years old and I had a no Brownie style camera 120 roll film and I was going to be getting it with my grandfather and I built a wet dark room in my dad‘s workshop. I was yearbook staff photographer in high school. So I kind of always dabbled in it, and even and even in my professional career, it was always kind of a part of the job. I did a lot of web design and interactive multimedia software development and stuff through the dot com era, and I was able to use a lot of my photography and graphic design skills on some of these projects, designing user interfaces for software programs for Rand McNally and doing a newsletter for the National Association of Realtors and such. I was able to use a lot of those skills for various projects for various clients.”
“It wasn’t until now, or when I started this National Park Poster project, and actually after I ran a couple of Kickstarter campaigns, that it became obvious that there was an interest in this kind of artwork and there is a market for it, so that’s kind of what I left my my clients in the rearview mirror and in this direction.”
What drew you to nature and to the National Parks in particular?
“So I grew up in Northern California. And in back in the day was only maybe a four hour drive up to Yosemite. And I would camp there a lot with my family, camp and backpack there a lot as a youth with friends. My brother got married there, and my grandparents actually honeymooned there almost 100 years ago. In California, there are a lot of national parks, and there are just a lot of beautiful places, so feel like I kind of grew up with it, with the parks.”
What do America's parks and wild lands mean to you?
“I think that they are a testament to the beauty and then the power of nature. You know, I’m pretty grateful that we’ve been able to preserve a lot of these places, because most countries haven’t been able to; they have very limited amounts of open spaces, and certainly not national parks at the scale that we have so. It’s nice that we have that. I think it’s a reminder that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, and that we have a responsibility to protect and preserve these places for future generations to enjoy.”
Do you have a favorite park? And which have you yet to visit that you still hope to experience?
“Well, Yosemite, for all those reasons I mentioned, but I am thinking the biggest reason of them all was that when I was 19 years old, I had the opportunity to be part of one of Ansel Adams’s workshops there. I was by far the youngest person in that group, and I think I appreciate the experience more today than I did back then, but experiencing it was amazing. And I think anytime you can spend a week in a national park, and to be behind the camera doing what I loved, it was just an amazing experience. But there’s so many parks and they each have so many different features about them. I would say Yosemite is definitely my favorite, followed by Yellowstone and Grand Teton, probably a close second and third.”
What do you wish more people knew about our parks?
“I guess that we can take care of them better — we’re kind of loving them to death, especially in the last few years. During Covid, people were really going out much more to the parks because you’re outdoors, and it can be an inexpensive trip and whatnot, but I hope we can better do what we can to preserve them for future generations. I feel like I’m already kind of in a third generation in my family who has been able to explore the parks. I have kids and grandkids that we’ve already taken there, and I just hope more people understand how important they are to our ecosystems, and how they give us a classroom to truly understand nature right now. They’re important for all of us.”
What was the motivation for creating these new WPA-style posters? What are your hopes for the National Parks Posters project?
“Yeah, so the the backstory is maybe a little lengthy, but my daughter was getting married and she found a vintage style dress, then she asked me to create some matching artwork for a things table cards and save the date cards and a poster that guests could sign. So I went around Boulder, Colorado, and the University of Colorado, all places that were near and dear to her and her soon-to-be husband, and I created a series of these pieces of artwork in this kind of WPA-style.”
“At the wedding — this has become my line — I’d be like I know this is my daughter’s special day, but everybody kept coming up to me and saying: ‘These are great. You should do something with these!’ And that is when I got going. I started a Kickstarter campaign and started off running a couple of them, so that was kind of the genesis of it all. I had at that point in time already a fairly good collection of photographs from the national parks, as I’ve been visiting them over all the years and photographing them.”
“My goal is to get to all 63 just because I’m pretty close. I’ve got the 55 down, so you know if I could finish that off, all 63, it would be an accomplishment. For the motivation, though, I hope that this whole project kind of just helps raise a bit of awareness. I do also donate 10% of my annual profits to organizations that support the national parks, so it’s giving me a way to give back a little bit, and then hopefully help some of these organizations with some of their projects and missions to create new trails and educational exhibits and things like that. So it’s a small piece, but I like to think that I’m making a contribution.”
IMAGES C/O ROBERT DECKER