May 30, 2006 - In a world where 8-tracks and the once ground-breaking Compact Discs have been eclipsed by MP3s and digital files, the announcement for Douglas Kent Hall's upcoming and anticipated exhibition takes us back to the beginning; it's a 12x12 package made to look just like our favorite, dusty old LP albums. The slipcase is wrapped with black and white pictures of rock's classics, complete with Jimi Hendrix's telling smile drawing us in as the center image. Inside is a mock vinyl record revealing Hall's show, "The Photo Album, Volume One: 1967 - 1970," which will run from May 26 until June 26 at the Riva Yares Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The announcement would find a happy home slipped right in with your old vinyl collection, sitting back to back with originals that it reminisces on its cover, from Mick Jagger to James Brown.

Hall's "The Photo Album" is an experience that takes us back to when rock music thrived as a movement that defined our identity as young Americans. Things like free love, social change and people's new radical ideas soared at that time, and it wasn't fueled just by the acid everyone was on. Those artists' revolutionary efforts inspired an undeniable energy that marks classic 60s and 70s Americana.

Hall recalls what it was like growing up in the late 60s, "I was young and uncertain of who I was or what my future would be. Like everyone around me, I was riveted to the music. I grooved on the sounds. I locked into the message I drew from the lyrics. I knew it was hardly a philosophy; so I took it as a mantra. My cameras gave me an inroad. They served as my drug and my religion." His photographs, took mostly during live performances where the magic was being made, take us on a near-psychedelic journey back to that indescribable world laced with Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Jim Morrison as our tour guides.

Douglas Kent Hall is a New Mexico resident who has a diverse photographic background, rooted in capturing the natural and cultural essence of New Mexico for over 30 years with his loyal Leica camera. Hall captures the icons of the West with the ferocity and gentile he sees in the Cowboys, the Indians, and the Spanish. Though his touring of Europe, Mexico, South America, and Japan, along with his long residences in London and New York have placed him in the worldly canon that leads the international art world, it has also confirmed his place as a true Westerner.

In addition to being a photographer, Hall is a writer, poet, and filmmaker, and his multi-dimensional talents translate through his images, like the classically poetic black and whites in his New York Collection. Hall has over 40 published books, and in 2005 received both the Gold Medal Career Award from Florence Biennale Internazionale Dell'Arte Contemporanea and the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Bottom Photo Grid from the left to right:
All Images from The Photo Album, Volume One: 1967 - 1970
© Douglas Kent Hall

GLADYS KNIGHT on stage at the Copacabana.
ROGER DALTRY of THE WHO on stage in New York.
ERIC CLAPTON & CREAM on stage in Seattle.
SLY STONE on stage in Long Island.
JIMI HENDRIX in Seattle.
DR. JOHN, THE NIGHT TRIPPER on stage at The Filmmore in New York.
SANTANA on stage at Fillmore East in New York.
WILSON PICKETT on stage at The Apollo in New York.
JAMES BROWN on stage at The Apollo in New York.