RockBlog

Professor Tom is one of those few people you can categorize into culture oriented. His views on culture and tradition are more sorely different from what we think. His professional art has been influenced by his American Indian Native tradition whereby he takes this cultural background as his reference of subjects and motivation. His art has been chained to discover history and tell stories of his culture by his photography that comprises of shots of little objects or things that defer as a symbolism to the American Indian Tribe. He refers to himself as “… an Indian First and an Artist Second.” These quite shows how much appreciation and full hearted he’s committed to his culture. His professional status is at no point higher that his culture values. In my opinion it seems that everything that drives all his motives in a daily life revolve around the culture itself. His art is a revolution and preservation of the Indian culture.

I went to Tom Jones visual culture lecture and I found it very different then most work in today’s society. I found some of it very intriguing because of the cultural differences between my lifestyle and Native Americans lifestyle. I noticed their clothing is much different and I also noticed their ceremonies are different as well. I felt very traditional when I related his lifestyle and pictures to mine because he showed and analyzed the everyday life and the things that makes his culture different from mine. I found his newer work more interesting. I liked that he used artifacts and everyday items and just scanned them to make an image. I also really liked the postcards because I think a lot of people take postcards for granted but they are a beautiful part of history. I think postcards are an important part about learning about a time in history and a culture. I also think it’s really cool that we have some of his work at the Tweed Museum to be able to look at.

The lecture that Tom Jones gave was really interesting to listen to. His work is very Native American base, specifically about the Hochunk tribe, and it really shows the life and culture of the Hochunk Indians. Tom Jones photographed the Hochunk in their natural every day lives, and really portrayed behind the scenes of what other photographers usually wouldn't be able to capture. Some things that were really interesting to me were that he photographed children suffering from small pox, which I have never actually seen such a real and detailed picture of. He did photos similar to the old time photo look with different members of the tribe, and used his compositions similar to what he saw in paintings. Another really interesting thing is that he photographed two young girls with their Uncle, and the Uncle is supposed to be the disciplinarian of the family to the children, which is much different from American culture. He also did a propaganda postcard series which I found really interesting because he mimics American postcards in a way, and adds the Indian culture to them as a twist. His lecture was very informing, and I learned a lot from listening to Tom Jones speak about his history and work.

Tom Jones’ presentation on Tuesday night was very interesting to listen to. What I got most from his lecture is that his identity and background are what makes him as an artist. In his lecture he said, “I am Indian first, artist second.” This statement makes you really understand the background to all of his photographs. I found it interesting that many photographs that Jones showed us at the beginning were all black and white. I wondered if he ever shot in color. I later found out that he does. I found it very cool that he often time photographed his grandfather. Another thing that I took from this lecture was that often times when he photographs people, he likes to get other pictures in the frame of the shot, to show family. I also liked that Jones told us that he didn’t stage most of his photographs; he just took pictures of people in their daily attire. I found the photographs he showed us at the end to be very different than the first photos he showed us as these focused a great deal on color and shapes, but this photographs were interesting to me as well as they each told their own story.