Douglas Kent Hall was an American writer and photographer. Hall was a fine art photographer and writer of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, essays, and screenplays. He was in high school when he first published a story, his first published photographs were of Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

 and Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison

James Douglas "Jim" Morrison was an American musician, singer, and poet, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band The Doors...

, and his first exhibition of photographs was at the Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

.

He published twenty-five books, including two with Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....

. His photographs are of rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 superstars, rodeo

Rodeo

Rodeo is a competitive sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain, Mexico, and later the United States, Canada, South America and Australia. It was based on the skills required of the working vaqueros and later, cowboys, in what today is the western United States,...

, cowboys, prison, flamenco

Flamenco

Flamenco is a genre of music and dance which has its foundation in Andalusian music and dance and in whose evolution Andalusian Gypsies played an important part....

, bodybuilders, the U.S.-Mexico border, the American West, New Mexico, New York City, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Great Britain, Greece, Russia, Native Americans, writers, and artists. Hall's artistic output included collaborations with Larry Bell

Larry Bell (artist)

Larry Bell is a contemporary American artist and sculptor. He lives and works in Taos, New Mexico, and maintains a studio in Venice, California. From 1957 to 1959 he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles as a student of Robert Irwin, Richards Ruben, Robert Chuey, and Emerson Woelfer...

, Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....

, Terry Allen, and his son Devon Hall.

At the time of his sudden death in 2008, solo exhibitions of his photographs hung concurrently at the Harwood Museum of Art

Harwood Museum of Art

Harwood Museum of Art is located in Taos, New Mexico. Founded in 1923 it is the second oldest art museum in New Mexico. Its collections include a wide range of Hispanic works and visual arts from the Taos Society of Artists, Taos Moderns, and contemporary artists. In 1935 the museum was...

, Taos, New Mexico; the Riva Yares Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...

; and the Roswell Museum and Art Center

Roswell Museum and Art Center

The Roswell Museum and Art Center is located in Roswell, New Mexico, and features exhibits about the art and history of the American Southwest. Exhibits include fine art, sculpture, prints, decorative arts, and historic artefacts....

, Roswell, New Mexico. His book In New Mexico Light had just been selected for the Eric Hoffer Award.

Early years

Hall was born in Vernal, Utah

Vernal, Utah

Vernal, Uintah County's largest city, is located in eastern Utah near the Colorado State Line, and 175 miles east of Salt Lake City. It is bordered on the north by the Uinta Mountains, one of the few mountains ranges in the world which lie in an east-west rather than the usual north to south...

, to Phyllis Hiatt and Charles William "Peck" Hall; he was the elder of two children. His brother, Wayne Hall, was born eighteen months after Douglas. Although Vernal is a Mormon community, the young Hall family did not practice the faith. While Peck Hall was serving in the Navy during World War II, his marriage to Phyllis broke up and the two small boys started living with their maternal grandmother, Beulah Perry. Hall's elementary and high school years were spent with his grandparents on rural farms in the Vernal area. He raised sheep and cows that he exhibited and sold at County Fairs. During high school Hall was a rodeo contestant.

College years

At the age of seventeen, Hall entered Utah State University, Logan, to study creative writing. He was already a published author. He transferred to the University of Utah

University of Utah

The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...

 in Salt Lake City and then to Brigham Young University

Brigham Young University

Brigham Young University is a private university located in Provo, Utah. It is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , and is the United States' largest religious university and third-largest private university.Approximately 98% of the university's 34,000 students...

 where he earned his bachelor's degree in English in 1960. At BYU Hall started what would become lifelong friendships with Alfred Bush and David Stires. The three enthusiastic writers lived and breathed literature and other creative arts. Bush became the Curator of Western Americana at the Firestone Library, Princeton University, and Stires became a publishing executive. Highlights of Hall's undergraduate years included study of the creative process with Brewster Ghislen, author of the landmark book The Creative Process. Between his junior and senior years at BYU, Hall met and married Claire Nicholson, of Boise, Idaho. The two remained married for ten years.
After earning his undergraduate degree at BYU, Hall was accepted into the prestigious Writer's Workshop

Iowa Writers' Workshop

The Program in Creative Writing, more commonly known as the Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, is a highly regarded graduate-level creative writing program in the United States...

 at the University of Iowa

University of Iowa

The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...

, Iowa City. For three years he worked as special assistant to Paul Engle, director of the program. While at the Writer's Workshop Hall befriended, among others, Mark Strand, Galway Kinnell, W. S. Merwin, and Adrian Mitchell. Hall wrote and published extensively while at Iowa.

Early career

Hall's master of fine arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop in 1963 led to a position at the University of Portland

University of Portland

The University of Portland is a private Roman Catholic university located in Portland, Oregon. It is affiliated with the Congregation of Holy Cross and is the sister school of the University of Notre Dame. Founded in 1901, UP has a student body of about 3,600 students...

 teaching Creative Writing and Literature. Hall and Claire moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1964. During his time at the University of Portland, Hall brought many well-known poets to the school for readings, such as Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

, W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

, Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature, and short stories...

, Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...

, Robert Duncan

Robert Duncan (poet)

Robert Duncan was an American poet and a student of H.D. and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry and Black...

, William Stafford

William Stafford

William Edgar Stafford was an American poet and pacifist, and the father of poet and essayist Kim Stafford. He was appointed the twentieth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1970....

, and Robert Bly

Robert Bly

Robert Bly is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the Mythopoetic Men's Movement.-Life:Bly was born in Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, to Jacob and Alice Bly, who were of Norwegian ancestry. Following graduation from high school in 1944, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving...

. Hall also became active in an organization called American Writers Against the Vietnam War

American Writers Against the Vietnam War

American Writers Against the Vietnam War was an umbrella organization created in 1965 by American poets Robert Bly and David Ray. The group organized readings, meetings and joined in rallies, teach-ins, and demonstrations against the Vietnam War, allowing writers to protest under a collective...

. At this time a friend lent Hall a camera and he taught himself photography, seriously studying photographic technique and style. He photographed poets and the group of artists he befriended in Portland, including Lee Kelly, Duane Zaloudek, Carl Morris, Hilda Morris, Doug Lynch, among others.

Hall's method of teaching creative writing included taking his students on car trips, overseeing student film productions, and having students grade themselves. His increasing interest in photography led to freelance photographic work. He photographed Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison of the Doors for Sunn Music, makers of amplifiers. He received various other commercial and magazine photographic assignments. Hall realized he could dedicate himself to his writing and photography and left the world of academia.

In 1967 Hall traveled throughout England, France, Italy, Spain, Morocco, and Portugal with his cameras. He shot his first images in the Dark Landscapes series. In 1968 Hall moved from Portland to London and continued work in advertising and on his series of artist and writer portraits and his art photography. He began formulating the idea of Passing, which dominated most of the philosophy behind his personal work.

Career as an independent writer and photographer

Hall and his wife moved from London to New York City in 1968. He continued to photograph rock and roll stars, which resulted in the publication of Rock: A World Bold as Love, released later in paperback as The Superstars: In Their Own Words. In New York, Hall continued writing. He published his first novel, On the Way to the Sky, in 1972. This book fictionalized Hall's childhood years in Vernal, Utah, and his renegade Hall relatives.

While driving across the country with his college friend Alfred Bush in 1969 to photograph American Indians, returning to the West of his youth, Hall shot his first Passing series. In 1971 he developed the first negatives for Passing II. The idea of time and the photograph continued to deepen and became the guiding influence behind his total photographic output.

Hall's marriage to Claire dissolved in 1970. He returned briefly to Portland, Oregon, and worked doing commercial photography jobs and writing. He met his future second wife, Dawn Claire Davidson, a fashion coordinator, in May 1971. The following December the two moved to New York and set up residence and studio in a loft on 21st Street and 7th Avenue. As they were moving in, comedian and filmmaker Christopher Guest was moving out. Of note, when Hall and Dawn moved out of the loft in 1976, the poet Mark Strand moved in.

In the 1970s Hall lived in New York but spent much time traveling. His work included writing a book about rodeo titled Let Er Buck; writing and codirecting a feature documentary film about rodeo titled The Great American Cowboy, which won an Academy Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary; and publishing a photography book titled Rodeo, which was followed in the early 1980s by another book about cowboys, this one about ranch cowboys, titled Working Cowboys. Mark Strand writes, "These cowboys, as opposed to urban cowboys, drugstore cowboys, rodeo cowboy, or movie cowboys, stay on horseback all day long working cattle. And when they stand in front of the camera—in Hall's best photos, they are standing, looking straight into the camera lens—their detached way of life shows." The 1970s also saw the publication of Hall's second novel, Rock and Roll Retreat Blues. Significantly, in 1974, Hall exhibited his photographs for the first time, at the Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

 in New York. The exhibition and accompanying catalog, Photography in America, is where the public first viewed the now iconic photograph Mesquite, Texas.

During the latter half of the 1970s and the early 1980s, Hall worked on books collaboratively for the first time in his career. In 1975 Hall's literary agent, Bob Dattila, asked him if he would be interested in working on a project with the bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hall and Schwarzenegger published two books, Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder and Arnold's Bodyshaping for Women. Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder was on the New York Times Best Seller list

New York Times Best Seller list

The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...

 for eleven weeks in 1978. In 2002, Sports Illustrated included the Hall/Schwarzenegger collaboration as number 71 on their "Top 100 Sports Books of All Time". During the writing and photographing of Bodyshaping for Women, Hall started an acquaintance with the female bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, which led to the publication of their Lisa Lyon's BodyMagic. The Incredible Lou Ferrigno, with bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno, rounded out Hall's collaborative publishing ventures with bodybuilders.

In 1977 Hall and his partner Dawn moved from New York to the small village of Alcalde in northern New Mexico. After living together for more than six years, they were married in Santa Fe on July 23, 1977. In 1980 their son Devon Douglas was born.

Hall traveled throughout the Southwest and along the Mexico-U.S. border in the 1980s gathering material for two photographic books. The Border: Life on the Line introduced Hall to the varied types of people who live and work on both sides of the border. The book includes many color photographs. "In an ideal marriage of uncompromising photography and compelling prose, Hall transports us to 2,000 miles of borderland, revealing it in all its contradictory dimensions." Frontier Spirit: Early Churches of the Southwest also includes many color images. "Photographer-author Douglas Kent Hall takes us to the most celebrated churches as well as to the most obscure, including hauntingly evocative ruins in remote parts of New Mexico." Known primarily for his black-and-white work, these two books highlight the diversity of Hall's oeuvre.

Most well known for his silver prints, in 1992 Hall began printing with platinum. His classic western images of cowboys and Matachines comprise the suite of prints. Also in the early 1990s, Hall traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia to document the Hermitage Museum's art school for children. He photographed in the student's homes and at the museum. During this period Hall also traveled to Minas Gerais, Brazil to document the region's gold and gemstone miners.

In the mid-1990s Hall began producing one-of-a-kind photographic artworks. His Zen Ghost Horses series are images of Peruvian Paso and Clydesdale horses exposed onto hand-made paper that was brushed with emulsion. Hall embellished the works with gold leaf, Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, and acrylics. Taking color images shot along the Mexico-U.S. border, Hall created a suite of artes de caja (art boxes). These pieces incorporate color photograph, poems, milagros, objects picked up while traveling the border, and pages from Mexican graphic novelettes into and on hand-painted wooden wine boxes. The Albuquerque Museum showed fifteen of the border boxes for four months as part of a tribute exhibition for Hall in the summer of 2008.

The Halls sold their Alcalde home and studio in 2001 and moved to Albuquerque, where they built a studio and wet and dry darkrooms onto an existing round house. Hall's New Mexico cohort included artists Larry Bell

Larry Bell

Larry Bell may refer to:*Lawrence Dale Bell , American industrialist and founder of Bell Aircraft Corporation*Larry Bell , contemporary artist based in Los Angeles, California and Taos, New Mexico*Larry Bell, founder of Bell's Brewery...

, Terry Allen

Terry Allen

Terry Allen may refer to:*Terry Allen , American Big Band singer*Terry Allen , American country singer and artist*Magnum T.A...

, Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....

, Susan Rothenberg

Susan Rothenberg

Susan Rothenberg is a contemporary painter who lives and works in New Mexico, USA.-Background:Rothenberg was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1945...

, Tom Palmore, Ken Price

Ken Price

Ken Price may refer to:* Ken Price , English football player* Kenneth Price , American ceramist and printmaker*Kenny Price, singer and actor...

, Bill Barrett, Paul Pletka, Charles Strong, Ron Cooper, Gus Foster, and others.
After being awarded the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2005, the Museum of New Mexico Press published Hall's In New Mexico Light, a compilation of his most enduring, compelling images taken over a forty-year time span.

Writer and photographer Hall was not only a novelist, photographer, writer of nonfiction, and film script author, he was also a poet. In 2002 his first collection of poems was published in Visionary. The book also contains an extended automemoir/poem.

Martial arts

Hall began studying and practicing Kaju Kenpo karate in Santa Fe in 1986, receiving his Nidan black belt in 1998. He taught karate in Española, New Mexico until 2002. While continuing to practice karate, Hall also incorporated Tai Chi into his daily spiritual practice. When photographer Joyce Tenneson

Joyce Tenneson

Joyce Tenneson is an American fine art photographer known for her distinctive style of photography, which often involves nude or semi-nude women. Tenneson shoots primarily with the Polaroid 20x24 camera...

 selected Hall in 2004 for inclusion in her book Amazing Men, she photographed him working with martial arts weapons.

Death

Hall died suddenly, unexpectedly, at his home in Albuquerque on March 30, 2008; the cause of death was described as "a cardiac incident." He was survived by his wife, Dawn, and son, Devon Hall, a composer and pianist. In a 2011 review of an exhibition of Hall's platinum photographic prints, art critic Wesley Pulkka wrote, "He died suddenly from an unexpected cardiac event like a perfectly tuned race car with a hidden flaw whose engine implodes two-thirds down the straightaway while well in the lead."

Writing

Hall's first writing was fiction. His first novel, On the Way to the Sky, is set in Utah and explores themes that surface frequently in his work: small-town life, surviving a broken home, Mormonism, hunting and fishing, music, and rodeo. Writer Mag Dimond asked Hall in 1997 which of his books were his favorite and why. "His first choice was On the Way to the Sky, the book he wrote when he was about twenty-one, a steely, sweet autobiographical novel he didn't publish until almost six years later. About this book he simply says, 'I was able to define my past, get it behind me where it belongs.' . . . This stunning little novel is rich in characters suggested by real people . . . written in startlingly original language." The New York Times Book Review noted, "Mr. Hall invents distinctive family backgrounds for his three heroes and arranges them into an impressionistic chronicle." In Rock and Roll Retreat Blues, his second novel, the humor is sardonic; it is a commentary on the world of rock and roll and the culture it creates and drives. According to a Publisher's Weekly review, "The book is chock-full of familiar contemporary figures—Hell's Angels, revolutionaries, people spaced out on religion or brown rice or drugs, even such exotics as the "plaster casters." Yet Hall is fresh and funny, and he makes Artie's [the protagonist's] search for his own psyche very real and very much a part of our times. (Excerpts ran in Penthouse)." The third novel, The Master of Oakwindsor, set in 1908 England, explores the clash between rural England and a new and darker industrial Britain and between two families. Bestseller magazine writes, "After three successful novels and an Academy Award–winning screenplay, it is no surprise that Hall's novel brings a fresh outlook to the overworked genre of historical romance. The Master of Oakwindsor is a diverse and brilliantly colored portrait of England and Europe at the turn of the century, bristling with event and detail."

Hall's numerous books of nonfiction, which include his photographs, treat various subjects, including rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

, rodeo

Rodeo

Rodeo is a competitive sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain, Mexico, and later the United States, Canada, South America and Australia. It was based on the skills required of the working vaqueros and later, cowboys, in what today is the western United States,...

, cowboy life, bodybuilding

Bodybuilding

Bodybuilding is a form of body modification involving intensive muscle hypertrophy. An individual who engages in this activity is referred to as a bodybuilder. In competitive and professional bodybuilding, bodybuilders display their physiques to a panel of judges, who assign points based on their...

, prison

Prison

A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

, the historic churches of the Southwest, and the border between the United States and Mexico. "The Border, about desperate lives lived on both sides of the United States–Mexico border, is at once a compelling piece of work, a lucid and personal rendering of Hall's own border experiences both in words and 'pictures.'" Let 'Er Buck is "a really deep look at rodeo and some rodeo people. Most of us have seen what goes on in the arena; this book mostly deals with the rest of it. . . . What [Hall] has said with his typewriter and his camera is bound to be controversial." About Hall's book In New Mexico Light, Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, wrote: "the thoughtful text in this book [is] testimony to the work of an artist who has dedicated his life to observing the rich cultural texture of New Mexico." In New Mexico Magazine

New Mexico Magazine

The New Mexico Magazine launched in 1923, is the first state magazine founded anywhere in the nation, preceding Arizona Highways. New Mexico Magazine publishes a monthly print edition, maintains a website, and also prints and sells books, posters, notecards and many other gift items.-Overview:Based...

, Jon Bowman writes, "Hall accompanies the images [in In New Mexico Light] with some of the most lucid, engaging essays on the photographic process you'll ever read. He's a straight-shooter all the way. There's no mention of f-stops or arcane technical knowledge, but rather some fine storytelling, mixing in roughly equal doses of the sacred and the profane."

Photographs

Many of Hall's images have become known as icons of Americana, such as Mesquite, Texas 1973, and Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison

James Douglas "Jim" Morrison was an American musician, singer, and poet, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band The Doors...

, Portland. Princeton University curator Alfred Bush writes: "Unlike the majority of the photographic explorers, who are continually clicking away at the American West, Douglas Hall's camera is firmly rooted in the region's very center." Hall's photographs are mainly of people; he finds his subjects worldwide, from New York to the Southwest, from Russia to Japan, Brazil to Mexico, as well as in places like Morocco and the Outer Hebrides Islands. On the occasion of the exhibition in Santa Fe of Os Brasilieros (The Brazilians), David Bell notes, "Hall, who has recently made several trips to Brazil and the Amazon, takes as his subjects not only the miners who were his first objective but families, farmers . . . and students, too. The result is a composite portrait of a people who in most cases appear to give themselves with equal abandon to the camera and to life." He continued to work in film and branched into digital imagery, shooting both color and black-and-white. Hall crossed the digital photography boundary by moving into fine art color photographs printed on handmade watercolor paper. Mark Strand

Mark Strand

Mark Strand is an American poet, essayist, and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990. Since 2005, he has been a professor of English at Columbia University.- Biography :...

 noted in Vogue Magazine, "There is nothing provisional about Hall's enterprise; it is both broad and, in individual photographs, scrupulously resolved. His pictures have an edge, a magical certainty about them that not only justifies but also honors their subjects, no matter how odd or how exploited." Writing about Hall's 2007 book In New Mexico Light, Dave Gagon notes, "A filmmaker and poet, as well as a photographer, Hall has photographed and written about New Mexico's unique mix of places and people, a broad representation including ancient sites and Spanish churches, Indian ceremonial dances, portraits of artists and writers, viejos and vagabonds. He invigorates his 182 black and white photographs with descriptive prose—something most visual artists have difficulty achieving." In his Foreword to In New Mexico Light actor/playwright Sam Shepard

Sam Shepard

Sam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child...

 writes, "The photographs in this book are naked impressions of the mind and spirit just waiting for somebody as lucky and gifted as Douglas Kent Hall to hunt them down and seize them with a little black box." When discussing the complex relationship of a photograph to history, Hall noted to the author of Photography: New Mexico, Kristin Barendsen, "that a photograph imparts the illusion of permanence, when in fact the scene depicted no longer exists. What's more, he said, the photograph does not represent exactly what its maker saw. It takes on a life of its own, and because each viewer experiences it differently, the image reflects an essence of the viewer. 'That's not my photograph,' he said, pointing to his most famous image, Mesquite, TX, hanging in his studio. 'It belongs to the viewer.'"

Transition to digital photography

Hall started out with a 35mm camera, added a 2 1/4 square format camera, and kept working with those two formats using Nikons, Leicas, and Hasselblads. In the mid-1990s he added digital cameras to his arsenal. In a Rangefinder magazine article, Hall said to author/photographer Paul Slaughter: "I am using a Nikon D70s digital SLR and I always carry a Nikon point-and-shoot that fits into my pocket. It does interesting things to the color (which I like). I also use an Olympus C-5050 digital camera that has a wonderful f/1.8 lens. My new series, Travel, is all digital color and I am fascinated by the images because they are different from anything I've done before. The creative part is the same, the tools are the tools—the cameras." Hall had five external hard drives full of images and did his best to keep them organized. He said to Slaughter, "I am a bit haphazard in my approach to work. I am more intuitive than anything else. That is part of my imagery evolvement." Hall used the Photoshop and LightRoom software programs for after-capture processing and did his own printing, both digital and traditional. He had four Epson inkjet printers. For digital printing he favored watercolor papers as they render a softer image. He told Slaughter: "I am often upset that I can no longer readily find traditional printing supplies. . . . That concerns me more than thinking about where photography is going. I look at the photographs being done and feel that the new digital work is less convincing than film work. But I feel certain that photographers such as Edward Weston would have brought a special look to digital. I hope I am doing the same. In the end, with either digital or film, I choose what pleases my eye. I think the world of professional photography is much like it has always been, full of challenge."

Awards

• J. Marinus Jensen Short Story Contest, Brigham Young University, 1959
• Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Great American Cowboy, 1974
• Honorary Chair, College of Notre Dame's Sister Catherine Julie Cunningham visiting scholar award. Fine Arts Department, College of Notre Dame, San Francisco, Spring 1997
• Distinguished Alumnus of Uintah High School, Vernal, Utah, 1999
• New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, 2005
• Medici Gold Medal Career Award, Florence Biennale
  Florence Biennale
  The Florence Biennale is an international contemporary art fair held every two years in the Historical Fortezza da Basso in Florence, Italy. The Biennale is run by Arte Studio, whose first contemporary art exhibition occurred in 1986. Subsequent exhibits grew, and they eventually formed the first...
  
   Internazionale Dell'Arte Contemporanea, 2005
• Finalist, New Mexico Book Awards, art books, for In New Mexico Light, 2008
• Eric Hoffer Award for Art books, for In New Mexico Light, 2008

Quotations

• The camera, the split-second blink of the shutter, taught me that time does not pass. It is we who pass. We pass through time and we waste only ourselves. Time is indifferent to us and to our folly. Time remains the one certainty we have, the fixed and constant factor-more concrete than life, more permanent than space.

Artist statement

Art is my beginning and my end.

It is everything I do—my morning, my noon, and my night.

Art is my confessor and my salvation.

It is each photograph I shoot, each novel, poem, and film I write.

Art defines what the photograph is, just as the photograph defines who I am; in the same way the words I craft tell the secrets of my heart.

Art is my Bible, my Constitution.

Art is my God and my devil.

Art is everything I am, all I want to be.

It will be my epitaph.

Books

• Rock: A World Bold As Love (1970) ISBN 0809292300
• The Superstars: In Their Own Words (1970) ISBN 0-8256-6020-3
• On the Way to the Sky (1972) ISBN 0-8415-0125-4
• Let 'Er Buck! (1973) ISBN 0-8415-0274-9
• Rock and Roll Retreat Blues (1974) ISBN 0-380-00159-4
• Rodeo (1975) ISBN 0-345-24877-5-795
• The Master of Oakwindsor (1976) ISBN 0-690-01171-7
• Ski with Billy Kidd (1976) ISBN 0-8092-8310-7
• Van People: The Great American Rainbow Boogie (1977) ISBN 0-690-01418-X, ISBN 0-690-01452-X (pbk.)
• Arnold: The Education of a Body Builder (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) (1977) ISBN 0-671-22879-X
• Bodyshaping for Women (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) (1979) ISBN 0-671-24301-2
• Bodymagic (with Lisa Lyon) (1981) ISBN 0-533-01296-7
• The Incredible Lou Ferrigno (1982) ISBN 0-671-42863-2
• Working Cowboys (1984) ISBN 0-03-070418-9
• The Border: Life on the Line (1988) ISBN 0-89659-685-0
• In Prison (1988) ISBN 0-8050-0592-7
• Passing Through: Western Meditations of Douglas Kent Hall (1989) ISBN 0-87358-485-6
• Frontier Spirit: Early Churches of the Southwest (1990) ISBN 0-89659-914-0
• New Mexico: Voices in an Ancient Landscape (1995) ISBN 0-8050-1233-8
• Prison Tattoos (1997) ISBN 0-312-15195-0, ISBN 978-0-312-15195-9
• Albuquerque 2000 (2000)
• The Thread of New Mexico (2001)
• Visionary (2002) ISBN 0-938631-46-2
• Noches Perdidas, 2003
• In New Mexico Light (2007) ISBN 978-0-89013-501-3
• City Light: Douglas Kent Hall's New York, forthcoming

Films

• The Great American Cowboy, screenplay and narration
• Wheels of Fire, director and screenplay
• Arnold and Maria, interviewee, E! Networks, 2003
• Arnold Schwarzenegger: Hollywood Hero, interviewee
• In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, screenplay (with Justin Ackerman)
• The Great Joe Bob, screenplay, based on a song by Terry Allen
  Terry Allen
  Terry Allen may refer to:*Terry Allen , American Big Band singer*Terry Allen , American country singer and artist*Magnum T.A...
  
  
• Sirens, photographer
• Fool for Love, photographer
• Roosters, photographer

Photography

Public collections

• Atlantic-Richfield, Dallas, TX, and Los Angeles, CA
• Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico
  University of New Mexico
  The University of New Mexico at Albuquerque is a public research university located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the United States. It is the state's flagship research institution...
  
  , Albuquerque, NM
• Chase Manhattan Bank
  Chase Manhattan Bank
  JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., doing business as Chase, is a national bank that constitutes the consumer and commercial banking subsidiary of financial services firm JPMorgan Chase. The bank was known as Chase Manhattan Bank until it merged with J.P. Morgan & Co. in 2000...
  
  , New York, NY
• The Doan Collection, Fort Dodge, IA
• Fannin National Bank, Houston, TX
• Wells Fargo Bank, Los Angeles, CA
• Steve Gold, Inc., New York, NY
• Ovenwest Corporation, Albuquerque, NM
• The Albuquerque Museum
  Albuquerque Museum
  The Albuquerque Museum is located in Albuquerque, New Mexico in Old Town Albuquerque dedicated to preserving the art of the American Southwest and the history of Albuquerque and the Middle Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. The museum also contributes significantly to the cultural and educational...
  
  , Albuquerque, NM
• Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE
• Princeton University Library
  Princeton University Library
  Princeton University Library is the main library system of Princeton University. With holdings of more than 7 million books, 6 million microforms, and 37,000 linear feet of manuscripts, it is headquartered in the Harvey S...
  
  , Princeton, NJ
• Millicent Rogers Museum
  Millicent Rogers Museum
  In 1956, the Millicent Rogers family founded the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, New Mexico. Initially the artworks were from the multi-cultural collections of Millicent Rogers and her mother, Mary B. Rogers, who donated many of the first pieces of Taos Pueblo art...
  
  , Taos, NM
• Bibliothèque nationale de France
  Bibliothèque nationale de France
  The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
  
  , Paris
• Blue Cross Blue Shield
  Blue Cross Blue Shield Association
  The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association is a federation of 39 separate health insurance organizations and companies in the United States. Combined, they directly or indirectly provide health insurance to over 100 million Americans. The history of Blue Cross dates back to 1929, while the history of...
  
  , Albuquerque, NM
• New Mexico Museum of Art
  New Mexico Museum of Art
  The New Mexico Museum of Art , the oldest art museum in the state of New Mexico, is one of four state-run museums in Santa Fe...
  
   (formerly the Museum of Fine Arts), Santa Fe, NM
• El Paso Museum of Archaeology, TX
• Roswell Museum and Art Center
  Roswell Museum and Art Center
  The Roswell Museum and Art Center is located in Roswell, New Mexico, and features exhibits about the art and history of the American Southwest. Exhibits include fine art, sculpture, prints, decorative arts, and historic artefacts....
  
  , Roswell NM
• New Mexico State University Museum, Las Cruces, NM
• Blue Cross Blue Shield, Philadelphia, PA
• Midwestern State University
  Midwestern State University
  Midwestern State University is a public liberal arts college in Wichita Falls, Texas, and a member of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges...
  
  , Wichita Falls, TX
• Brooklyn Museum
  Brooklyn Museum
  The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
  
  , Brooklyn, NY
• Marina Pacific Hotel, Venice Beach, CA, two collections
• Mobil Oil Corporation, Dallas, TX
• Rose Art Museum
  Rose Art Museum
  The Rose Art Museum, founded in 1961, is a part of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA. Named after benefactors Edward and Bertha Rose, it offers temporary exhibitions, and it displays and houses works of art from the Brandeis University art collections...
  
  , Brandeis University
  Brandeis University
  Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
  
  , Waltham, MA
• City of Phoenix, AZ
• New Mexico State Capitol
  New Mexico State Capitol
  The New Mexico State Capitol, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the house of government of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the only round state capitol in the United States, and is known informally as "the Roundhouse"....
  
  , Santa Fe, NM
• Museum of the American West, Autry National Center
  Autry National Center
  The Autry National Center of the American West is an intercultural center and museum in Los Angeles, California that celebrates the diversity and history of the American West through three important institutions: the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of the American West, and the...
  
  , Los Angeles, CA
• McAllen International Museum, McAllen, TX
• The Martin Foundation, San Francisco, CA
• Star Canyon, Las Vegas, NV
• Albuquerque International Sunport Collection, NM
• Princess Cruise Line, CA
• University of New Mexico, Los Alamos, NM
• University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM
• Regency Hotel, Hong Kong, China
• University of California at Los Angeles, Arts Library, CA
• Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, NM

Notable photographs

• Mesquite, Texas
• Jimi Hendrix Seattle
• Taos Man
• Bareback Rider
• Tina Turner
• Andy Warhol at the Factory
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Horse, La Villita
• Generations, Navajo
• Sandia
• Jim Morrison Portland
• Calf Roping, Pendleton
• Picuris Man
• Bell Spur
• Paris, 1980

Notable personalities photographed

Other books, catalogs, and portfolios about Hall or with contribution by Hall

• Photography in America, New York, Random House, 1974, pp. 246–47. ISBN 0-517-391287
• Boundary 2: A Journal of Postmodern Literature, Binghamton, NY, 1982
• The Cowboy, New York, Stewart, Tabori, & Chang, 1983, pp. 226–27. ISBN 0-941434-25-7
• Photoflexion, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1984
• Third Western States Exhibition, New York, The Brooklyn Museum; Santa Fe, Western States Arts Foundation, 1986, Library of Congress Catalogue No. 85-052333
• 3 / Photographers: Douglas Kent Hall, Bruce Berman, and Roger Manley, Roswell Museum and Art Center, NM, 1986
• Images of Spirit and Vision, Santa Fe, NM, Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987, p. 74. ISBN 0-89013-169-4
• Die Gleichzeitigkeit des Anderen, Stuttgart, Germany, Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1987
• Way Out West, Tokyo, Japan, Treville Publishing Co., 1990, 21 pages. ISBN 4-8457-0573-3
• Electric Gypsy, London, England, Heinemann and Heinemann, 1990, color p. xv. ISBN 0-312-05861-6
• Zero Mass, The Art of Eric Orr, Stockholm, Sweden, Propexus, 1990, pp. 284–85. ISBN 91-87952-03-3
• Esquire/Japan, Working Cowboys and Artist Profile, Tokyo, Japan, July 1991
• Southwest Profile, Portfolio of Fourteen Photographs; Santa Fe, NM, August, September, October 1991
• Southwest Profile, Portfolio of Nine Photographs, Santa Fe, NM, November, December, January 1991/1992
• The Jimi Hendrix Concerts, Bella Godiva Music, Inc., 1991, pp. 18, 36, 96, 122, 154. ISBN 0-7935-0102-4
• Radio One, Hendrix, Bella Godiva Music, Inc., 1991, all photographs. ISBN 0-7935-0307-8
• Imago, vols. 3–5, Japan, Portfolio, 1992
• Chaco Past, Boxed Portfolio of Douglas Kent Hall photographs of Chaco Canyon, 1992
• Chaco Future, Boxed Portfolio of Douglas Kent Hall photographs of Chaco Canyon, 1992
• Photographer's Forum, Exclusive magazine interview and portfolio of eight photographs, November 1992
• a simple story (Juárez), Terry Allen, Ohio State University, Wexner Center, 1992
• The Photograph and the American Indian, by Alfred L. Bush and Lee Clark Mitchell, Princeton University Press, 1994 ISBN 0-691-03489-3
• The Paintings of William Lumpkins, "William Lumpkins in Roswell," catalog essay, Roswell Museum and Art Center, NM, 1995
• Understanding Art, Fourth Edition, by Lois Fichner-Rathus, Prentice Hall, 1995
• It's Only Rock and Roll: Rock and Roll Currents in Contemporary Art, by David S. Rubin, Munich, Prestel, 1995. ISBN 33-7913-1627-3
• The Inner World of Jimi Hendrix, by Monika Dannemann, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1995. ISBN 0-312-13738-9
• Jimi Hendrix: The Ultimate Experience, by Adrian Boot and Chris Salewicz, London, Boxtree, 1995. ISBN 0-7522-0710-5
• Philadelphia Photo Review, portfolio, Prison Tattoos, the Stations of the Body, volume 19, number 4, Fall 1996
• Westerns, by Lee Clark Mitchell, University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0-226-53234-8
• A Borderless Vision: A Douglas Kent Hall Retrospective, catalog for Solo Exhibition, Wiegand Gallery, Belmont, CA, 1997
• Larry Bell: Zones of Experience, two essays, Albuquerque, The Albuquerque Museum, 1997, Library of Congress Catalogue No. 94-12045
• Eyewitness: The Illustrated Jimi Hendrix Concerts, 1969–1970, complied by Ben Valkhoff, Up from the Skies Unlimited, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 1997, p. 80. ISBN 90-803803-1-8
• Master Breasts, Aperture, New York, NY, 1998, pp. 4–5. ISBN 0-89381-803-8
• 23. International Biennial of Graphic Arts/Mednarodni Graficni Bienale, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 1999
• Leslie Marmon SIlko, University of New Mexico Press, 1999, cover photograph. ISBN 0-8263-2033-3
• Tamarind: Forty Years, by Marge Devon, University of New Mexico Press, 2000, p. 145. ISBN 0-8263-2072-4
• Spider Woman: A Story of Navajo Weavers and Chanters, Gladys Reichard, University of New Mexico Press, 2001, cover photograph. ISBN 0-8263-1793-6
• Alvin Lee & Ten Years After, by Herb Staehr, Hingham, MA, Free Street Press, 2001. ISBN 0-9708700-0-0
• New Mexico Magazine, Master's Showcase, July, 2001
• Chokecherries 2001 (Cover photo), SOMOS, Taos, NM, 2002
• Magnifico: Art of Albuquerque: A World of Paint and Polish, catalog essay, August 2002
• Tony Price Atomic Artist, catalog essay, The Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM, "Dancing to the Music: Tony Price in Retrospect," November 2002
• The Book of War: White Sands, collaborative multimedia artist book. Portfolio of Douglas Kent Hall photographs of White Sands
  White Sands
  White Sands may refer to:*White Sands, New Mexico, United States*White Sands Missile Range, formerly the White Sands Proving Ground, a military installation in New Mexico hosting:** White Sands Test Center, operated by the United States Army...
  
  , and DVD/CD of Douglas Kent Hall poetry read by Douglas Kent Hall with music composed and recorded by Devon Hall, composer, 2002
• The Social Lens, University Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM, July 2003
• Just You Just Me: The Art of Lily Fenichel, catalog essay, Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, NM, 2004
• Amazing Men, photographs by Joyce Tenneson, Bulfinch, New York, 2004. ISBN 0-8212-2855-2
• Classic Hendrix, Genesis Publications, Surrey, England, 2004 ISBN 0904351904; ISBN 978-0904351903
• New Mexico 24/7, DK Publishing, New York, 2004, pp. 65, 66, 70–71, 107, 110, 120–21. ISBN 0-7566-0071-5
• Dugout, by Terry Allen, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2005. ISBN 0-292-70686-3
• Carl*s Cars Magazine, Photographic Portfolio and Interview, "Van People." Issue 12, Summer 2005, Oslo, Norway
• Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, by Charles Cross, Hyperion, 2005, insert p. 9. ISBN 1-4013-0028-6
• Carl*s Cars Magazine, Cover and Photographic Portfolio, "Passing." Issue 14, Winter 2005, Oslo, Norway
• Biennale Internazionale Dell'arte Contemporanea, Quinta Edizione, Florence Biennale, Italy, 2005
• Essentials of Argument, by Nancy V. Wood, Pearson/Prentice Hall, NJ, 2006, border photograph. ISBN 0205827020
• Hope: Preserving Tibetan Culture, Dalai Lama
  Dalai Lama
  The Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...
  
   Benefit, CoolGreySeven/Dalai Lama Norbulinka Institute, 2006
• Jimi Hendrix: An Illustrated Experience, Janie L. Hendrix and John McDermott, New York and London, Atria Books, 2007. ISBN 978-0-7432-9769-1; ISBN 0-7432-9769-5
• Green, Inaugural Exhibition, essay by Sharyn Udall, 516 Arts, Albuquerque, NM, 2007
• El Palacio, excerpt from In New Mexico Light, 6 pages, Fall 2007
• Iconic America, Tommy Hilfiger with George Lois, New York, Rizzoli/Universe, November 2007. ISBN 978-0-7893-1573-1
• Insights: The Portraiture Of Charles R. Rushton, Nabee-Gerrer Museum of Art, Norman Oklahoma, 2008. ISBN 978-0-615-17331-3
• Titans: Muhammad Ali and Arnold Schwarzenegger, photographs by Al Satterwhite, essay contributions by Douglas Kent Hall, Dalton Watson Fine Art Books, 2008. ISBN 978-185443-231-5
• Mass: Of This World: The Art of Alan Paine Radebaugh
  Alan Paine Radebaugh
  Alan Paine Radebaugh, a contemporary American artist, was born May 2, 1952 in Boston, Massachusetts, raised in Maine and New York, and moved to New Mexico in 1979....
  
  , Radebaugh Fine Art, Albuquerque 2008
• Photography: New Mexico, essays by Kristin Barendsen, Fresco Fine Art Publishers, 2008. ISBN 978-1-934491-10-2
• Thirty Year Selected Retrospective, Midwestern State University Art Gallery, Wichita Falls, TX, 2008
• Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin, and Florence Miller Pierce, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA, 2009. ISBN 978-1-8589-4481-4
• Rangefinder, portfolio of eight photographs, article by Paul Slaughter, March 2009
• Terry Allen, University of Texas Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-292-72246-0
• Perspectives on Argument, by Nancy V. Wood and James Miller, Pearson Education, NJ, 2011, border photograph. ISBN 0205060331
• The Rolling Stones in Portugal, Rolando Rebolo, Zebra Publicações, 2011
• Larry Bell, Carré d’Arte–Musée d’art contemporain de Nimes, France, 2011. ISBN 978-2-84066-442-0
• Hendrix on Hendrix: Encounters and Interviews with Jimi Hendrix, Steven Roby, Chicago Review Press, 2012

External links

• The Douglas Kent Hall Papers at Princeton University