Poolaw Photography Project
Summer 2004

The Horace Poolaw Photography Project explores issues of indigenous self-representation during an important transitional period of native culture on the Southern Plains of Oklahoma. Poolaw, a prolific Kiowa photographer from the 1920’ to the 1950’s, sought to portray native people in both contemporary and traditional formats. His photographs escape standard classification modes signifying acculturation or preservation models of representation. In doing so these images express a complex, varied and sometimes contradictory message about the Kiowa community Poolaw inhabited.