Tom Jones’ Photography Highlights His Ho-Chunk Heritage

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Photo by Tom Jones

Tom Jones - Elizah Leonard portrait

Tom Jones - Elizah Leonard portrait

Every artist has his or her oeuvre, a body of work informed by a personal muse that inspires the thoughts and emotion driving that work. For photographer Tom Jones, that muse is his Ho-Chunk heritage, and his oeuvre is occupied with telling the story of his people.

“All my work deals with Native American issues,” says Jones, who teaches photography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “For me, it’s Indian first, and the art comes second.”

On July 23, the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend will open “Tom Jones: Here We Stand,” the first major retrospective of the Ho-Chunk photographer’s work. The exhibition features 120 photographs from 16 bodies of work spanning 25 years of Jones’ career. In many different ways Jones’ images show that Native American communities are vibrant and diverse, and not assimilating, vanishing or frozen in time as some people might think.

“I’ve known Tom’s work since 2009 when we exhibited some of his ‘Encountering Cultures’ series,” says MOWA’s Director of Exhibitions Graeme Reid, who curated the current exhibition. “We felt it was time to do a retrospective before someone else did.”

Rich Body of Work

Jones’ singular focus on his Ho-Chunk heritage has resulted in a rich body of work that illustrates different angles, issues and points of view regarding the Ho-Chunk Nation, Reid explains. From chronicling events at the annual Memorial Day Pow-wow in Black River Falls honoring Ho-Chunk veterans to his ‘Strong, Unrelenting Spirits’ series that features beautifully photographed Ho-Chunk portraits around which Jones himself has beaded a shimmering framework in white to represent the spiritual world, the photographer’s work is as rich and as varied as the culture it represents.

In addition to MOWA, Jones’ work is on display at the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the University of New Mexico Art Museum in Albuquerque, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., and countless corporate and private collections. Jones’ portrait of Elizah Leonard, part of the ‘Unrelenting Spirits’ series, recently took second-place honors in the “Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today” competition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in D.C.

“The breadth and depth of his vision is what makes Tom Jones’ work unique,” Reid adds. “He combines insider knowledge of Ho-Chunk identity and culture with his experience of the wider world and the history of Native Americans in the U.S. His work examines, for better or worse, how the two fit together in the 21st century.”

For Jones, who began his career as a painter before switching to photography full-time, the goal of illustrating the life and world of his people is a driving force in his art, and his university affiliation allows him to follow his muse wherever it may take him on his mission to tell their story.

“It’s about just being visible in this world, which is why my exhibition is called “Here We Stand,” Jones says. “The majority if what I talk about is the beauty and resilience of Ho Chunk people and that we are still here. That’s another thread throughout my work. It’s all about educating others and making us visible to them.”

Tom Jones: Here We Stand runs July 23 through Oct. 9 at The Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205 Veterans Avenue, West Bend. An opening reception will be held July 23 from 2 to 4 p.m. For more information, visit wisconsinart.org.