Shelby Poor (b. 1991, Tulsa, Oklahoma) is an artist, scholar, and educator whose work engages with social documentary photography, critical studies, and the politics of representation. Growing up in a working-class family in Tulsa, her early experiences of instability and marginalization deeply shaped her commitment to socially engaged art.
She earned her BFA in Photography from the University of Tulsa in 2016 and went on to complete her MFA in Photo-Media at the California Institute of the Arts in 2018. In May 2025, she received her PhD in Critical Studies and Interdisciplinary Artistic Practice from Texas Tech University. Her dissertation, On White Trash Aesthetics: Social Praxis, Reclamation, and Political Intervention, develops a critical framework for reclaiming marginalized class-based identities through practice-based research, with a focus on photography as both method and intervention.
Poor’s artistic practice is rooted in the social documentary genre, but she deliberately works against its traditional conventions. Her ongoing photographic series I’m Not Dead Yet explores working-class identity, queerness, and survival in the contemporary U.S., combining visual storytelling with critical theory. Her work bridges scholarship and creative practice, aiming to dismantle reductive representations while foregrounding aesthetics of resistance and solidarity.
In addition to her research and studio practice, Poor has extensive teaching experience across studio art, photography, and art history. She has taught at both the university and secondary levels, with a pedagogy centered on equity, access, and layered learning. Her teaching and leadership emphasize not only technical skill and art historical knowledge but also critical engagement with social, political, and cultural contexts.