Horace Poolaw
The fifth of seven children, Poolaw was raised by a Kiowa family that was held in high esteem within the community, and his father was an important tribal historian.
A car accident in 1957 left Poolaw unable to work, but he continued to make photographs until the 1970s, at which time his failing eyesight made doing so impossible.
[9] One example is his portraits of Indian Princess in fair processions, in which his subjects, who are dressed in attire that celebrates their Native culture, are sitting on cars, in front of telephone wires, and by shops.
[11] Poolaw created photographs during four distinct periods of policy change for Native Americans, specifically Assimilation, Reorganization, Termination, and Self Determination.
[15] Tribal leaders were increasingly taking charge of Indian fairs, using them as opportunities for economic advancement and a place to openly perform and celebrate dances.
The last decade of Poolaw's career was during the period of self-determination in federal Indian policy, which was a shift toward allowing tribal governments and sovereignty and away from forced assimilation.
Poolaw's photographic legacy – which his daughter, Linda arranged to have printed, catalogued and exhibited after his death in 1984-record this intersection of cultures and transformation of family life, work and leisure in images of engaging thoughtfulness and sensitivity.
The exhibit, titled "War Bonnets, Tin Lizzies and Patent Leather Pumps: Kiowa Culture in Transition 1925-1955," traveled around the country in the early 1990s and was the subject of a major documentary video.
Linda Poolaw and her students traveled to Anadarko, Oklahoma on three separate occasions to enlist the help of Kiowa elders who sifted through the photographs identifying people and events.
The process of remembering brought the Kiowa generations together, as children were introduced to the photographs of deceased relatives, and younger people were confronted with images of their parents or grandparents.
Other before-and-after matches are less dramatic but equally compelling, as in the case of two pictures of Apache children at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania in 1886.
The assimilationist impulse took on missionary zeal in the careers of Frank C. Churchill (1850–1912), a United States Indian Agency employee, and his wife, Clara, both of whom photographed life on reservations.
But in a photo of Mrs. Churchill herself observing impoverished Apache women waiting in line for rations, the real us-them dynamic snaps into place.
Such jarring shifts in perspective recur everywhere in the show, which has been organized by Richard W. Hill Sr., a photographer and teacher at the State University of New York in Buffalo, and Natasha Bonilla-Martinez, director of education at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido.
This life-and-death skirmish, however, was being performed by actors in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show, which toured the United States and Europe to popular acclaim.
A more recent exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center in New York City (on view August 9, 2014 – February 15, 2015) is organized around the theme of Horace Poolaw as a man of his community and his time.
