Douglas Kent Hall

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For other persons named Douglas Hall, see Douglas Hall (disambiguation).

Douglas Kent Hall (born December 12, 1938 in Vernal, Utah, died March 30, 2008 in Albuquerque, New Mexico) was a United States writer and photographer.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Hall was a fine art photographer and writer of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, essays, and screenplays. His first story was published when he was in high school, and his first published photographs were of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

After attending Utah State University and the University of Utah, he earned his B.A. from Brigham Young University in 1960. He then attended the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa where he earned his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 1963. Hall taught at the University of Portland and the University of New Mexico. After teaching in Oregon he lived in London and then New York City.

He published twenty-five books, including two with Arnold Schwarzenegger. His photographs are of rock and roll superstars, rodeo, cowboys, prison, flamenco, bodybuilders, the U.S.-Mexico border, writers, and artists.

Douglas Kent Hall, writer and photographer

[edit] Awards

  • Medici Gold Medal Career Award, Florence Biennale Internazionale Dell’Arte Contemporanea, 2005
  • New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, 2005
  • 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
  • Academy Award, Best Documentary Feature, Great American Cowboy, 1974
  • J. Marinus Jensen Short Story Contest, Brigham Young University, 1959

[edit] The Writing

Douglas Kent 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. 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. 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’s numerous books of nonfiction, which often include his photographs, treat various subjects, including rock and roll, rodeo, cowboy life, bodybuilding, prison, and the border between the United States and Mexico.

[edit] Published books

  • Rock: A World Bold As Love, 1970
  • On the Way to the Sky, 1972
  • Let ’Er Buck!, 1973
  • Rock and Roll Retreat Blues, 1974
  • Rodeo, 1975
  • The Master of Oakwindsor, 1976
  • Ski with Billy Kidd, 1976
  • Van People: The Great American Rainbow Boogie, 1977
  • Arnold: The Education of a Body Builder (with Arnold Schwarzenegger), 1979
  • Bodyshaping for Women (with Arnold Schwarzenegger), 1979
  • Bodymagic (with Lisa Lyon), 1981
  • The Incredible Lou Ferrigno, 1982
  • Working Cowboys, 1984
  • The Border: Life on the Line, 1988
  • In Prison, 1988
  • Passing Through: Western Meditations of Douglas Kent Hall, 1989
  • Frontier Spirit: Churches of the Southwest, 1990
  • New Mexico: Voices in an Ancient Landscape, 1995
  • Prison Tattoos, 1997
  • Albuquerque 2000, 2000
  • The Thread of New Mexico, 2001
  • Visionary, 2002
  • Noches Perdidas, 2003
  • In New Mexico Light, 2007
  • City Light: Douglas Kent Hall’s New York, forthcoming 2008

[edit] Filmography

  • The Great American Cowboy, screenplay and narration
  • Wheels of Fire, director and screenplay
  • Arnold and Maria, interviewee
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger: Hollywood Hero, interviewee
  • Sirens, photographer
  • Fool for Love, photographer
  • Roosters, photographer

[edit] The Photographs

Many of Hall’s images have become known as icons of Americana, such as Mesquite, Texas 1973, and Jim Morrison, 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.”[1] 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. He continues to work in film and has branched into digital imagery, shooting both color and black-and-white. Hall crosses the digital photography boundary by moving into fine art color photographs printed on handmade watercolor paper. Mark Strand 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.”[2]

  1. ^ Alfred Bush, Introduction, in Douglas Kent Hall, Passing Through (Flagstaff, AZ: Northland, 1989).
  2. ^ Mark Strand, Vogue Magazine, "People Are Talking About," March 1985.

[edit] Public Collections

  • Atlantic-Richfield, Dallas, TX, and Los Angeles, CA
  • 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
  • Sheldon Memorial Museum, Lincoln, NE
  • Western Americana Collection, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
  • Millicent Rogers Museum, Taos, NM
  • Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France
  • Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Albuquerque, NM
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM
  • Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell NM
  • New Mexico State University Museum, Las Cruces, NM
  • Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Philadelphia, PA
  • Mid-Western State University, Wichita Falls, TX
  • Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
  • Marina Pacific Hotel, Venice Beach, CA, two collections
  • Mobil Oil Corporation, Dallas, TX
  • Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
  • City of Phoenix, AZ
  • State of New Mexico, Capitol Building, Santa Fe, NM
  • The Albuquerque Museum, 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, Albuquerque, NM
  • Regency Hotel, Hong Kong, China


[edit] External links