Douglas Kent Hall facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Douglas Kent Hall
Born	December 12, 1938 Vernal, Utah
Died	March 30, 2008(2008-03-30) (aged 69) Albuquerque, New Mexico
Occupation	Writer, photographer
Language	English
Nationality	American
Education	Brigham Young University Iowa Writers' Workshop
Period	1955–2008
Spouse	Claire Nicholson (1959–1970) Dawn Claire Davidson (1971–2008, his death)
Children	Devon Hall (b. 1980)

Douglas Kent Hall (born December 12, 1938 – died March 30, 2008) was an American writer and photographer. He was known for his amazing fine art photography and for writing many different kinds of books. He wrote fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.

His very first published photos were of famous musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. His first art show was at the Whitney Museum of American Art, a big museum in New York.

Douglas Kent Hall wrote 25 books. Two of these books were with the famous bodybuilder and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. His photographs often showed interesting subjects. These included rock and roll musicians, rodeo cowboys, and bodybuilders. He also photographed places like the U.S.-Mexico border, the American West, and different countries. These countries included Japan, Brazil, and Mexico.

He also worked with other artists like Larry Bell and Bruce Nauman. His son, Devon Hall, also collaborated with him. After Douglas Kent Hall passed away in 2008, his photos were shown in several art museums. These included the Harwood Museum of Art and the Roswell Museum and Art Center in New Mexico.

Early Life and Education

Douglas Kent Hall was born in Vernal, Utah. His parents were Phyllis Hiatt and Charles William "Peck" Hall. He was the older of two children. During World War II, his father was in the Navy. His parents separated, and Douglas and his brother lived with their grandmother, Beulah Perry.

He spent his school years living with his grandparents on farms near Vernal. He raised sheep and cows. He showed and sold these animals at local County Fairs. When he was in high school, he even competed in rodeos.

At age seventeen, Hall started college at Utah State University. He studied creative writing there. He later transferred to the University of Utah and then to Brigham Young University. He earned his bachelor's degree in English in 1960. At Brigham Young, he became good friends with Alfred L. Bush and David Stires. These friendships lasted his whole life.

Hall was accepted into the famous Iowa Writers' Workshop. He worked there for three years as an assistant to the program's director, Paul Engle. While at the workshop, he became friends with many well-known writers. These included Mark Strand and Galway Kinnell. He also wrote and published his own work during this time.

Starting His Career

In 1963, Douglas Kent Hall began teaching. He taught Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Portland in Oregon. He and his first wife, Claire, moved to Portland in 1964. While teaching, Hall invited many famous poets to the school. They came to give readings of their work. Some of these poets were Allen Ginsberg and W. H. Auden.

Hall also became active in a group called American Writers Against the Vietnam War. Around this time, a friend lent him a camera. He taught himself how to take photos. He studied different photography techniques and styles. He took pictures of poets and artists he knew in Portland.

His interest in photography grew, and he started doing freelance photo work. He photographed Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison for a music company. He got many jobs taking photos for businesses and magazines. He realized he could make a living from his writing and photography. So, he decided to leave his teaching job.

In 1967, Hall traveled through many countries in Europe and North Africa. He took his cameras with him. He started his "Dark Landscapes" photo series during this trip. In 1968, he moved to London. He continued working in advertising and on his art photography. He also started thinking about an idea he called "Passing." This idea became very important to his personal photography work.

Writing and Photography Work

In 1968, Hall and his wife moved from London to New York City. He kept photographing rock and roll stars. This led to his book Rock: A World Bold as Love. He also continued writing. His first novel, On the Way to the Sky, was published in 1972. This book was a fictional story based on his childhood in Utah. His time in the rock and roll world also inspired his novel Rock and Roll Retreat Blues, published in 1974.

In 1969, while driving across the country, Hall took photos for his first "Passing" series. In 1971, he worked on the negatives for "Passing II." The idea of time and how it relates to photographs became a key part of all his photo work.

Hall's first marriage ended in 1970. He briefly returned to Portland, Oregon. He did commercial photography jobs and wrote. In May 1971, he met Dawn Claire Davidson, who would become his second wife. They moved to New York City in December 1971.

In the 1970s, Hall lived in New York but traveled a lot. He wrote a book about rodeo called Let Er Buck!. He also co-directed a documentary film about rodeo called The Great American Cowboy. This film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. He published a photography book called Rodeo. Later, in the early 1980s, he published another book about ranch cowboys called Working Cowboys.

In 1974, Hall's photographs were shown for the first time at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. His photo Mesquite, Texas was first seen by the public at this exhibition.

From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, Hall worked on books with other people. In 1975, his agent asked him to work with bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hall and Schwarzenegger published two books together. These were 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. Sports Illustrated even called it one of the "Top 100 Sports Books of All Time." Hall also worked with female bodybuilder Lisa Lyon on her book, Lisa Lyon's BodyMagic. He also wrote The Incredible Lou Ferrigno with bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno.

In 1977, Hall and Dawn moved from New York to Alcalde, New Mexico. They had lived together for over six years. They got married in Santa Fe on July 23, 1977. Their son, Devon, was born in 1980.

In the 1980s, Hall traveled around the Southwest and the U.S.-Mexico border. He gathered material for two photography books. The Border: Life on the Line showed the many different people living on both sides of the border. This book included many color photographs. Another book, Frontier Spirit: Early Churches of the Southwest, also had many color images.

Hall was best known for his black-and-white photos. But in 1992, he started printing with platinum, which gives a special look. In the early 1990s, he also traveled to Saint Petersburg, Russia. He documented an art school for children at the Hermitage Museum. He photographed the students in their homes and at the museum. During this time, Hall also went to Brazil. He documented gold and gemstone miners there.

In the mid-1990s, Hall started making unique art pieces. His "Zen Ghost Horses" series featured images of horses. He put these images onto handmade paper that had a special coating. He then added gold leaf, calligraphy, and paint to these works. He also created "artes de caja" (art boxes) using color photos from the U.S.-Mexico border. These boxes included photos, poems, and objects he found during his travels. The Albuquerque Museum showed fifteen of these border boxes in 2008.

In 2005, Hall received the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts. After this, his book In New Mexico Light was published. This book was a collection of his photos taken over forty years. In 2002, his first collection of poems, Visionary, was published.

Martial Arts

Douglas Kent Hall started studying Kaju Kenpo karate in Santa Fe in 1986. He earned his Nidan black belt in 1998. He taught karate in Española, New Mexico, until 2002. While still practicing karate, Hall also started practicing Tai Chi every day. In 2004, photographer Joyce Tenneson included Hall in her book Amazing Men. She photographed him working with martial arts weapons.

Death

Douglas Kent Hall died suddenly at his home in Albuquerque on March 30, 2008. The cause of death was a "cardiac incident," meaning a heart problem. He was survived by his wife, Dawn, and his son, Devon Hall, who is a composer and pianist.

His Writing

Hall's first writings were fiction stories. His first novel, On the Way to the Sky, is set in Utah. It explores themes that often appeared in his work. These include small-town life, growing up in a broken home, and rodeo. Writer Mag Dimond once asked Hall which of his books was his favorite. He chose On the Way to the Sky. He said it helped him "define my past, get it behind me." This novel has rich characters inspired by real people.

His second novel, Rock and Roll Retreat Blues, uses humor to comment on the world of rock and roll. His third novel, The Master of Oakwindsor, is set in England in 1908. It explores the differences between rural England and the new industrial areas.

Hall also wrote many non-fiction books that included his photographs. These books covered many subjects. They included rock and roll, rodeo, cowboy life, bodybuilding, and historic churches in the Southwest. He also wrote about the border between the United States and Mexico. His book The Border is a powerful look at the lives of people on both sides of the border.

His Photographs

Many of Hall's images have become very well known. They are seen as important parts of American culture. Examples include Mesquite, Texas 1973 and Jim Morrison, Portland. Princeton University curator Alfred L. Bush said that Hall's camera was "firmly rooted in the region's very center." Hall's photos mostly focused on people. He found his subjects all over the world. He photographed people from New York to the Southwest, and from Russia to Brazil.

When his exhibition Os Brasileiros (The Brazilians) was shown, David Bell noted that Hall photographed not just miners but also families, farmers, and students. This created a full picture of the Brazilian people. Hall continued to work with film and also started using digital cameras. He created beautiful color photographs printed on handmade watercolor paper.

Moving to Digital Photography

Hall started his photography with 35mm cameras. He later added a 2¼ square format camera. He used cameras like Nikons, Leica Cameras, and Hasselblads. In the mid-1990s, he also started using digital cameras. He told a magazine, "I am using a Nikon D70s digital SLR and I always carry a Nikon point-and-shoot that fits into my pocket." He also used an Olympus digital camera with a great lens.

He had many external hard drives filled with images and tried to keep them organized. Hall used computer programs like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom to edit his photos. He did his own printing, both digital and traditional. He had four Epson inkjet printers. For digital printing, he liked watercolor papers because they made the images softer. He believed that the creative part of photography was the same, no matter the tools.

Archives

Douglas Kent Hall's papers are kept at the Princeton University Library. This collection is open to researchers. It includes many of his writings and other materials.

Awards

• J. Marinus Jensen Short Story Contest, Brigham Young University, 1959
• Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, The Great American Cowboy, 1974
• 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 Internazionale Dell'Arte Contemporanea, 2005
• Finalist, New Mexico Book Awards, for In New Mexico Light, 2008

Famous Quotes

• "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."

Works

Books

• Rock: A World Bold As Love (1970) ISBN: 0-8092-9230-0
• 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: 0345248775
• 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
• 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: 0553014412
• 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
• Albuquerque 2000 (2000)
• The Thread of New Mexico (2001) ISBN: 978-0-9779910-7-5
• 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! Network, 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
• Sirens, photographer
• Fool for Love, photographer
• Roosters, photographer
• Tattoo Nation, still photographs
• Robert Bly: A Thousand Years of Joy, A Film by Haydn Reiss, still photographs

Photography

Public Collections

• Atlantic Richfield, Dallas, TX, and Los Angeles, CA
• Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
• Chase Manhattan Bank, 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, NM
• Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, TX
• Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE
• Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
• Princeton University Library, Princeton, NJ
• Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ
• Millicent Rogers Museum, Taos, NM
• Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
• Blue Cross Blue Shield, Albuquerque, NM
• New Mexico Museum of Art (formerly the Museum of Fine Arts), Santa Fe, NM
• El Paso Museum of Archaeology, El Paso, TX
• Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell NM
• New Mexico State University Art Museum, Las Cruces, NM
• Blue Cross Blue Shield, Philadelphia, PA
• Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, TX
• Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
• Hotel Erwin, Venice Beach, CA, two collections
• Mobil Oil Corporation, Dallas, TX
• Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
• City of Phoenix, AZ
• New Mexico State Capitol, Santa Fe, NM
• Museum of the American West, Autry National Center, 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
• University of New Mexico, HSC Art Collection, NM
• Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, TX
• Regency Hotel, Hong Kong, China
• University of California, Los Angeles, Arts Library, CA
• Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, NM
• Palace of the Governors, New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe, NM
• National Museum of African American History and Culture, a Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

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

Images for kids

• Mesquite, Texas 1973.jpg

  Mesquite, Texas

• Jim Morrison, Portland.jpg

  Jim Morrison, Portland