Douglas Kent Hall

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For other people with the same name, see Douglas Hall (disambiguation).
Douglas Kent Hall
Born(1938-12-12)December 12, 1938
Vernal, Utah, U.S.
DiedMarch 30, 2008(2008-03-30) (aged 69)
Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.
Occupation
  • Writer
  • photographer
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
EducationBrigham Young University
Iowa Writers' Workshop
Period1955–2008
SpouseClaire Nicholson (1959–1970)
Dawn Claire Davidson (1971–2008, his death)
ChildrenDevon Hall (b. 1980)

Douglas Kent Hall (December 12, 1938 – March 30, 2008) was an American writer and photographer. Hall was a fine art photographer and writer of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, essays, and screenplays. His first published photographs were of

Whitney Museum of American Art
.

Hall published twenty-five books, including two with

Terry Allen
, and his son Devon Hall.

In 2008, following Hall's death, solo exhibitions of his photographs hung concurrently at the

Roswell Museum and Art Center
, Roswell, New Mexico.

Early life and education

Hall was born in Vernal, Utah, to Phyllis Hiatt and Charles William "Peck" Hall. He was the oldest of two children. While Peck Hall was serving in the Navy during World War II, his marriage to Phyllis broke up and the two 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.[1]

At the age of seventeen, Hall entered Utah State University, Logan, to study creative writing. He transferred to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and then to Brigham Young University where he earned his bachelor's degree in English in 1960. At BYU Hall started lifelong friendships with Alfred L. Bush and David Stires. Bush became the Curator of Western Americana at the Firestone Library, Princeton University, and Stires became a publishing executive. Hall's undergraduate years included the study of the creative process with Brewster Ghiselin, editor of the book The Creative Process.[2] Hall met and married Claire Nicholson of Boise, Idaho between his junior and senior years at BYU. The two remained married for ten years.[1] Hall was accepted into the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa. For three years he worked as a special assistant to Paul Engle, director of the program.[3] While at the Writer's Workshop Hall befriended, among others, Mark Strand, Galway Kinnell, W. S. Merwin, Robert Bly, and Adrian Mitchell.[4] Hall wrote and published while at Iowa.[5]

Early career

In 1963, Hall commenced a position at the

Hilda Morris.[1]

Hall's 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 commercial and magazine photographic assignments and realized he could dedicate himself to his writing and photography and left the world of academia.[1]

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.[6]

Writing and photography career

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.[7] In New York, Hall continued writing. He published his first novel, On the Way to the Sky, in 1972.[8] This book fictionalized Hall's childhood years in Vernal, Utah, and his relatives. Hall's time spent in the world of rock and roll led to his novel Rock and Roll Retreat Blues, published in 1974.[9]

While driving across the country with Alfred Bush in 1969, Hall shot his first Passing series. In 1971, he developed the first negatives for Passing II.[6]

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.[1]

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.

Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. The exhibition and accompanying catalog, Photography in America, is where the public first viewed his photograph, Mesquite, Texas.[11]

During the latter half of the 1970s and the early 1980s, Hall worked on books collaboratively. In 1975, Hall's literary agent, Bob Dattila, asked him if he would be interested in working on a project with 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 for eleven weeks in 1978.[12] In 2002, Sports Illustrated included the Hall/Schwarzenegger collaboration as number 71 on their "Top 100 Sports Books of All Time".[13] During the writing and photographing of Bodyshaping for Women, Hall became acquainted with female bodybuilder Lisa Lyon; the friendship led to the publication of their book Lisa Lyon's BodyMagic.[14] The Incredible Lou Ferrigno, with bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno, rounded out Hall's collaborative publishing ventures with bodybuilders.[15]

In 1977, Hall and his partner moved from New York to the village of Alcalde, 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 was born.[citation needed]

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.[16] Frontier Spirit: Early Churches of the Southwest also includes many color images.[17]

In 1992, Hall began printing with platinum. Also in the early 1990s, Hall traveled to Saint Petersburg, Russia, to document the Hermitage Museum's art school for children. He photographed in the students' homes and at the museum.[1] During this period Hall also traveled to Minas Gerais, Brazil, to document the region's gold and gemstone miners.[18]

In the mid-1990s, Hall began producing his Zen Ghost Horses series with images of Peruvian Paso and Clydesdale horses exposed onto handmade paper that was brushed with emulsion. Hall embellished the works with gold leaf, Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, and acrylics.[1] Taking color images shot along the Mexico–U.S. border, Hall created a suite of artes de caja (art boxes). These pieces incorporate color photographs, 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 2008.[19]

After being awarded the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2005,[20] Hall's In New Mexico Light, a compilation of his images taken over a forty-year time span, was published by the Museum of New Mexico Press.[21]

In 2002, Hall's first collection of poems was published in Visionary. The book also contains an extended auto-memoir/poem.[1]

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 selected Hall in 2004 for inclusion in her book Amazing Men, she photographed him working with martial arts weapons.[22]

Death

Hall died suddenly 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.[23][24]

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.

His second novel, Rock and Roll Retreat Blues, is a commentary on the world of rock and roll and the culture it creates. According to a Publishers Weekly review,[25]

The book is chock-full of familiar contemporary figures—Hells 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 the 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.

Hall wrote numerous books of nonfiction, which include his photographs, rodeo, cowboy life, bodybuilding, prison, the historic churches of the Southwest, and the border between the United States and Mexico.

Photographs

Princeton University curator Alfred L. Bush writes:[26]

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.

The protagonist in the Sam Shepard story "San Juan Bautista" says: "I'm more into faces—people; Robert Frank, Douglas Kent Hall, guys like that."[27] On the occasion of the exhibition in Santa Fe of Os Brasileiros (The Brazilians), David Bell notes,[28]

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.

Mark Strand noted in Vogue magazine,[29]

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.

When discussing the complex relationship of a photograph to history, Hall noted to the author of Photography: New Mexico, Kristin Barendsen,[30]

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 21⁄4 square format camera, and kept working with those two formats using Nikons, Leica Cameras, 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:[31]

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. 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

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. He told Slaughter:[31]

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.

Archives

Hall's papers are held at Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. The collection, which is open to researchers, consists of 101 boxes, spanning 93 linear feet.[32]

Awards

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.[38]

Works

Books

Films

  • The Great American Cowboy, screenplay and narration[33]
  • Wheels of Fire, director and screenplay[39]
  • Arnold and Maria, interviewee,
    E! Network
    , 2003
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger: Hollywood Hero, interviewee[40]
  • In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, screenplay (with Justin Ackerman)[41]
  • The Great Joe Bob, screenplay, based on a song by Terry Allen[41]
  • Sirens, photographer[42]
  • Fool for Love, photographer[43]
  • Roosters, photographer[44]
  • Tattoo Nation, still photographs[45]
  • Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy, A Film by Haydn Reiss, still photographs[46]

Photography

Public collections[41]
Notable photographs[48]
  • Mesquite, Texas[49]
  • Jimi Hendrix Seattle
  • Taos Man[50]
  • Bareback Rider
  • Tina Turner[51]
  • Andy Warhol at the Factory
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger
  • Horse, La Villita
  • Generations, Navajo[49]
  • Sandia
  • Jim Morrison, Portland[52]
  • Calf Roping, Pendleton
  • Picuris Man
  • Bell Spur
  • Paris, 1980

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

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Douglas Kent Hall, Visionary: An Autobiography with Commentary (Santa Fe: Pennywhistle Press, 2002), 27–134.
  2. ISBN 978-0-520-05453-0
    .
  3. ^ Carol Sklenicka, Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life (New York: Scribner, 2009), 95.
  4. ^ a b Thomas R. Smith, ed., Walking Swiftly: Writings in Honor of Robert Bly (New York: Harper Perennial, 1993), 73.
  5. ^ Douglas Kent Hall, "I, Georg Gurko, and Other Stories of Friendship and Love," Master of Fine Arts Thesis, University of Iowa, 1964.
  6. ^ a b Douglas Kent Hall, Passing Through (Flagstaff, AZ: Northland, 1989.
  7. ^ Douglas Kent Hall, Rock: A World Bold as Love (New York: Cowles, 1970); Douglas Kent Hall, The Superstars: In Their Own Words (New York: Music Sales, 1970).
  8. ^ Douglas Kent Hall, On the Way to the Sky (New York: McCall Books, 1972).
  9. ^ Douglas Kent Hall, Rock and Roll Retreat Blues (New York: Avon, 1974).
  10. ^ Mark Strand, "Sure Enough Cowboys," in Douglas Kent Hall, Visionary (Santa Fe: Pennywhistle Press, 2002), 150.
  11. ^ Robert Doty, ed., Photography in America (New York: The Whitney Museum of American Art, 1974), 246.
  12. ^ "The New York Times Best Seller List, April 23, 1978" (PDF). Hawes Publications. Retrieved 18 November 2010.
  13. ^ "The Top 100 Sports Books of All Time". Sports Illustrated. December 16, 2002.
  14. ^ Douglas Kent Hall and Lisa Lyon, BodyMagic (New York: Bantam, 1981)
  15. ^ Douglas Kent Hall and Lou Ferrigno, The Incredible Lou Ferrigno (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982)
  16. ^ Douglas Kent Hall, The Border: Life on the Line (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), flap copy.
  17. ^ Douglas Kent Hall, Frontier Spirit: Early Churches of the Southwest (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), flap copy.
  18. ^ Douglas Kent Hall, Os Brasileiros (Santa Fe: Sena Galleries West, 1989) and (Las Vegas: Nevada State Museum, 1990)
  19. ^ At www.cabq.gov/museum.
  20. ^ "The Award Winners." http://artsawards.newmexicoculture.org/search.php?type=name&sort=year. New Mexico Department of Cultural affairs. Accessed April 2016.
  21. ^ Douglas Kent Hall, In New Mexico Light (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2007).
  22. ^ Joyce Tenneson, Amazing Men (New York: Bulfinch, 2004), 50–51.
  23. ^ "Douglas Kent Hall Obituary (2008) Santa Fe New Mexican". Legacy.com.
  24. ^ Craig, Smith (March 31, 2008). "Douglas Kent Hall, 1938–2008: A career full of diversity, insight". The Santa Fe New Mexican. Archived from the original on September 13, 2012. Retrieved May 18, 2010.
  25. ^ Publishers Weekly, October 7, 1974.
  26. ^ Alfred Bush, Introduction, in Douglas Kent Hall, Passing Through (Flagstaff, AZ: Northland, 1989).
  27. ^ Sam Shepard, "San Juan Bautista," in Day out of Days (New York: Vintage, 2010), 50.
  28. ^ David Bell, Journal North, December 14, 1989, 4.
  29. ^ Mark Strand, Vogue Magazine, "People Are Talking About," March 1985.
  30. ^ Kristin Barendsen, Photography: New Mexico (Albuquerque: Fresco Fine Art Publications, 2008), 101.
  31. ^ a b Paul Slaughter, "Douglas Kent Hall, 21st Century Renaissance Artist," Rangefinder (March 2009): 96–101.
  32. ^ "Douglas Kent Hall Papers, 1950s-2011 (mostly 1970-2000) - Finding Aids". findingaids.princeton.edu.
  33. ^ a b "The Great American Cowboy - IMDb". IMDb.
  34. ^ http://www.ndnu.edu/academics/; Douglas Kent Hall, Visionary: An Autobiography (Santa Fe: Pennywhistle Press, 2002), 27–134.
  35. ^ The New Mexican, Pasatiempo, September 23–29, 2005, p. 62; Rio Grande Sun, Arts, June 16, 2005, p. 10.
  36. ^ "Florence Biennale | Winners 2005". Archived from the original on 2010-12-10. Retrieved 2010-12-15.
  37. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-14. Retrieved 2010-12-15.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  38. ^ Douglas Kent Hall, 3 / Photographers (Roswell: Roswell Museum and Art Center, 1986), p. 3.
  39. ^ "Wheels of Fire (1973) - IMDb". IMDb.
  40. ^ "Arnold Schwarzenegger: Hollywood Hero (TV Movie 1999) - IMDb". IMDb.
  41. ^ a b c "Home". douglaskenthall.com.
  42. ^ "Sirens (1994) - IMDb". IMDb.
  43. ^ "Fool for Love (1985) - IMDb". IMDb.
  44. ^ "Roosters (1993) - IMDb". IMDb.
  45. ^ "Tattoo Nation (2013) - IMDb". IMDb.
  46. ^ "Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy (2015) - IMDb". IMDb.
  47. ^ "Collections | the MFAH Collections".
  48. ^ Douglas Kent Hall, Passing Through (Flagstaff, AZ: Northland, 1989), cover; http://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/C1384
  49. ^ a b "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-09-23. Retrieved 2014-04-08.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  50. ^ Douglas Kent Hall, In New Mexico Light (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2007), back cover.
  51. ^ "Douglas Kent Hall | Artnet".
  52. ^ "Douglas Kent Hall Auctions Results | Artnet".
  53. ^ "Welcome to the Complete Esquire Archive".
  54. ^ "Welcome to the Complete Esquire Archive".
  55. ^ "The Toughest Indian in the World". The New Yorker. 13 June 1999.
  56. ^ "The Ascetic Insight of W. S. Merwin". The New Yorker. 11 September 2017.

External links

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