The man whose photographic wizardry and insightful writing illuminated subjects ranging from rock stars, bodybuilders and flamenco dancers to prisoners, cowboys and the Southwestern landscape is dead. Douglas Kent Hall died early Sunday morning at his home in Albuquerque. He was 70.

"They say it was a cardiac incident, like dying in your sleep," said Hall's wife, Dawn, who found him unconscious on the floor at 6:30 a.m. Sunday morning. Paramedics were summoned, but they were unable to revive him. "He was in perfect health," she added, "fit as a fiddle. He exercised all the time."

Dawn Hall, a book editor, worked on all of her husband's projects. "It was fabulous — total collaboration and lots of fun," she said. "We had just been in Roswell ... for a book signing."

Hall was born in Vernal, Utah, on Dec. 12, 1938. He attended Utah State University and the University of Utah and earned a Bachelor of Arts from Brigham Young University in 1960. He earned his MFA in creative writing in 1953 from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, and then began teaching the craft.

In fact, photography came to Hall almost by accident, as he noted in a Nov. 2, 2007, Pasatiempo interview about his book In New Mexico Light. The collection of photographs and essays, his 24th book, was published by the Museum of New Mexico Press.

"I had a job teaching creative writing at a university in Oregon," Hall said then. "I had learned writing, had spent my life writing, and gone to the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, which was a really great place to go.

"I went out to teach, but I didn't like teaching all that much. In the process, I borrowed a camera from a brother-in-law I had, and I really loved what happened with the camera, and I just started earnestly working on photographs.

"And within a year or two, I had resigned my position, and I went off to be a photographer," Hall said. "I went to New York and I just worked from that time on as an artist."

Hall first came to New Mexico as a teenager, when he was still in school in Utah. "I couldn't believe how beautiful it was," he recalled in that 2007 interview. "I just started coming back every time I had a chance. I moved here in 1977, but ... I'd been making excuses to come here. It's too beautiful not to be here."

Hall said even in the late 1960s, when he was doing work here, "I knew ... that I had tapped something that was really unusual. I was dealing mostly with Native Americans and started in Arizona and then came into New Mexico.

"I had no idea, as I never have an idea, of where I was going in New Mexico. I'd get in my car and drive. ... You're always someplace important here, I think."

Hall won the 2005 New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, for photography. His other books include Rodeo (Ballantine, 1975), Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder (Simon & Schuster, 1979), The Border: Life on the Line (Abbeville Press, 1988), and New Mexico: Voices in an Ancient Landscape (Henry Holt, 1995).

A retrospective exhibit of Hall's work, "Forty Images — Forty Years: 1968-2007," went on display at Riva Yares Gallery in Santa Fe last November. It will now remain up through April as a tribute and memorial to Hall, gallerist Dennis Yares said.

"I have to say, of the 56 artists from 13 countries that we handle, this is a man I deeply admire and care for," Yares said. "I loved him.

"He never put any sort of pressure or conditions on us, our gallery. That made me want to do even that much more on behalf of his career. He was like the Ernest Hemingway of photography, all the way through. Incredible diversity and insight, and devotion. I've never known anyone more devoted to his craft.

"Down the road, he will be much more recognized than he already is," Yares said.

"The best thing about being an artist is being an artist," Hall said in a 2005 Pasatiempo interview.

"You know, people say, 'A picture is worth a thousand words.' But I always want to see a picture that just stops me, where I have no words. Those are the ones I wait for."

Besides his wife, Hall is survived by a son, Devon; a brother, Wayne Hall; and a half brother, Larry Hall. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Contact Craig Smith at 986-3038 or csmith@sfnewmexican.com.