A migrating snapping turtle stopped near a pond on Dobbins Ranch at 6:30 on the evening of June 2, 2022. Philip Heying took her picture.

The ranch is just south of Matfield Green, Kansas, where the veteran photographer has lived for nearly three years. After residing, working, and exhibiting in France, Italy, New York, and California, Heying’s move to the speck of a town two hours southwest of Kansas City allows him to be “within the subject that I most want to photograph,” he writes on his website.

Heying’s was a homecoming with a mission. The Kansas Citian and University of Kansas graduate photographs the Flint Hills to draw attention to the grave danger they’re in and encourage others to act.

In 2022, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his Flint Hills work.

“Prairies are disappearing all around the world,” says Heying, who has pieces in the permanent collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Microsoft Art Collection, and the Spencer Museum of Art. “They're either getting turned into farmlands or being neglected into deserts or turning into forests from invasive species.”

Intact prairies are massive carbon sinks – one of seven natural features able to draw in more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they release – making them crucial components of the planet’s ecosystem.

“Also, they're just places where a person exploring with open eyes and an open mind can get in touch with fundamental aspects of their experience as a human, and even their well-being,” he says.

To drive that home, he’s filled his exhibition “A Survey of Elemental Gratitude” with macro and micro views of the Flint Hills — from our vast solar system to tiny pond algae — creating a tension and sense of urgency. The images are displayed at the Kansas City Public Library’s Central location through Dec. 9.

Heying’s shot of the Milky Way includes “three jet navigation light trails” and a lone shooting star, a juxtaposition that could point to man’s insignificance or brilliance.

“To spend time living in a grassland is to become subliminally connected to the central alchemical idea: As above, so below,” Heying writes. “The intermingling of forms, the echoes and symmetries of processes that determine and permeate these forms, are constantly apparent.”

Heying’s remarks can seem abstract, but his observations verge on scientific.

In lieu of brief descriptive phrases or whimsical wording, Heying grounds each image with labels noting the location, time and date it was made.

“Algae in a brook tributary of the North Fork Verdigris River – 27 May 2020, 5:41 p.m.” is uncannily similar in color and texture to the migrating turtle’s portrait — the plants and animals are so interconnected they even look the same.

“Everything is contingent on everything else,” Heying says. “We spend way too much time controlling and manipulating the world and not nearly enough time being part of it.”

And while he does want viewers to feel called to act, he doesn’t want to come across as militant or angry. Instead, Heying hopes people will experience a feeling of inclusion.

“We're in the midst of a massive emergency,” he says. “That's really the ultimate motivation for what I'm doing now, is trying to deal with my feelings of concern about the state of the planet and the ecosystem and all the life around us.”



The exhibition, “A Survey of Elemental Gratitude,” is on display through Dec. 9 in the Mountain Gallery.

This story was produced in partnership with the KCUR 89.3 . Visit KCUR.org to hear the interview that aired on Oct. 6. Heying was also a guest on Up To Date on Oct. 10.