Photographic Salute

Photographic Salute to old Friend Great Artist of Many Connections & Loups.

Here is Don with the crew of Square One construction at Midsummer Festival-Boulder around 1980-81.
It took very little persuasion for him to understand why I wanted to have a torii gate built as part of the
festival design. He did a fabulous job of constructing one.

Phyllis Segura

Don Donaghy

Martha, Rebecca and I were privileged to see the recent show of Don's work in NYC, and to talk with Mahala there.

What a revelation!

We send our love to Maggie, Mahala, Halona and Steve. Don was a special man.

David Rome

For Don Donaghy

Photo by Marv Ross

Don and Maggie were among some of the first people I knew in Boulder. I remember sitting in their yard in those carefree days of yore laughing, drinking, engaging each other with fondness and jokes.

Don had a quality of speech that put him squarely in the world of spontaneous poetics. He spoke in images and wry insights into whatever was going on around him. Sometimes I felt like I was presented with what I came to call The Donaghy Koans. His unusual images forced me to relax my logical mind and fearlessly enter into Don's world of magic insights.

Then there were his photographs that spoke in the same way. He could be walking down a city street but the image he captured invoked another perception, another delicacy of appreciation. Suddenly you see a person walking up a stairway for the first time, a perfectly ordinary moment of life, but something else is happening--a tenderness and the sacred outlook that Don brought to both his photographs and his world.

He worked hard to support his family, three women and a son who meant the world to him. Only later in life, toward the end, did his photographs begin to receive the acclaim they deserve. I remember how proud he was when the New York School book came out. I told him I thought his images were the most sensitive and brilliant in the entire book. He scoffed in that shy way of his.

Then there was the time I tried to cut his hair for him. Strong hair that was determined to go its own way--just like Don who managed even at the end of his life to find escape routes and jokes. His tenderness never left him as he softly touched Maggie's knee but his impatience was also a factor that contributed to the difficult final phase.

But what I remember most is that gangly way he had of coming up to you after a dharma event with a grin and a spontaneous poem..."Beautiful images," I would say to him laughing. Then there would be more of them and I would carefully step into the world he was creating knowing I had entered into Don's magical kingdom of laughter and light.

Susan Edwards
24 July 2008
Boulder Colorado

Poem for Don

Elegy for Don Donaghy

Newcomb Greenleaf

Donnie, you saw our world

with such fresh eyes

Framing its sacred geometry for us

Donnie, you spoke our world

with such strange words

Leading us down winding paths

of mirrored emptiness

Donnie, you loved our world

with such raw courage

Touching our tendrest heart

til we opened in joy
at knowing you

Written July 28, 2008 on the F train
in the city of Don's classic photographs.

From the Boulder Camera

Don Donaghy, 71, of Boulder, passed away July 23. Don was born Leonard Donald Donaghy in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, of Leonard Simon Donaghy and Irene Leslie Donaghy.

Don was a longtime member of the Shambhala Buddhist community. He worked for many years as a construction foreman in the Boulder area, however he was foremost an artist, working mainly in photography, but also in painting and practical arts.

Don studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art after which he pursued street photography in Philadelphia and New York City. He also worked as a film editor and cameraman.

Don's photographic work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Eastman House and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. The landmark exhibition and publication The New York School, Photographs 1936-1963, by Jane Livingston, included a number of Don's photographs.

Livingston wrote "Don Donaghy's photographs of the early 1960s are among the most beautiful images made in the history of American photography." Don's work has recently been featured in The Last Photographic Heroes: American Photographers of the Sixties and Seventies, by Gilles Mora and in the major exhibition "Chance Encounters" at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. His first monograph, published by Nazraeli Press, will be released fall 2008.

Don is survived by his wife, Maggie Donaghy, whom he met and fell in love with at Woodstock; son, Steve Harley; daughters, Mahala Donaghy and Halona Donaghy; and sister, Leslie Donaghy.
A funeral service (sukhavati) will be held Friday, July 25 at 5 p.m., at Boulder Shambhala Center, 1345 Spruce St.

To the Noble Sangha,

Don Donaghy passed away, after a long and difficult illness, early on Wednesday, July 23. Friends who were with him said his passing was peaceful and very sweet.

Maggie, Halona and Mahala Donaghy and Steve Harley, Don's son, would like to express their appreciation for all of the friends who have been so kind in visiting Don and in helping with his passing.

- Carol Crutchlow