LaToya Ruby Frazier

Frazier in 2015

LaToya Ruby Frazier (born 1982) is an American artist and professor of photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. From Braddock, Pennsylvania, Frazier began photographing her family and hometown at sixteen, revising the social documentary traditional of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange to imagine documentation from within and by the community, and collaboration between the photographer and her subjects.[1] Inspired by Gordon Parks, who promoted the camera as a weapon for social justice, Frazier uses her tight focus to make apparent the impact of systemic problems, from racism to deindustrialization to environmental degradation, on individual bodies, relationships and spaces.[2] Speaking to the New York Times about her position, Frazier said, "“We need longer sustained stories that reflect and tell us where the prejudices and blind spots are and continue to be in this culture and society... This is a race and class issue that is affecting everyone. It is not a black problem, it is an American problem, it is a global problem. Braddock is everywhere.”[2]

Career

External video
LaToya Ruby Frazier: A visual history of inequality in industrial America, March 2015, 5:03, TED Talks[3]
ICP Infinity Awards: On location with LaToya, May 1, 2015, 9:05, MediaStorm[4]
LaToya Ruby Frazier, 2015 MacArthur Fellow, September 28, 2015, 5:03, MacArthur Foundation[5]

Frazier reports drawing and painting from a young age, and credits her Grandma Ruby's with setting high expectations for her achievements.[6] Entering college at seventeen, Frazier studied photography under Kathe Kowalski, who became an important mentor introducing her to feminist theory, semiotics and the political uses, good and bad, of photography.[6] Frazier graduated in 2004 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography and Graphic Design from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, and in 2007 received a Masters of Fine Art Photography from the School of Visual Performing Arts at Syracuse University.[7] After participating in the 2010-11 Whitney Independent Study Program, she began teaching at Yale University.[8]

Since 2009, she has been included in a range of major group exhibitions, including the New Museum's "The Generational Triennial: Younger Than Jesus", MoMA PS1's "Greater New York: 2010", the 2011 Incheon Women Artists' Biennale "Terra Incognita", and the 2012 Whitney Biennial. [9][10][11][12] Her solo museum exhibition, "A Haunted Capital," opened at the Brooklyn Museum in 2013.[13]

In 2014, Frazier published her first book, The Notion of Family.[14]

Awards

In 2014, Frazier was named a Guggenheim Fellow in Creative Arts.[15] The following year, she became a TED2015 Fellow and her monograph, The Notion of Family, published by Aperture in 2014, was awarded the 2015 Infinity Award for Best Publication by the International Center of Photography (ICP).[16][17] In 2015 Frazier was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, to which she responded that the award was "validation to my work being a testimony and a fight for social justice and cultural change.”[18][19]

Work

The photographic work of LaToya Ruby Frazier includes both images of personal spaces, intensely private moments and the story of racial and economic injustice in America. Her work includes raw portraits of friends and family members in intimate moments and examples of social injustice. As Frazier explains, "the collaboration between my family and myself blurs the line between self-portraiture and social documentary"[20] Often her work focuses on the plight of her home town of Braddock, Pennsylvania which became financially depressed after the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970-80's.[21] With black and white photographs, Frazier highlights the beauty of Braddock and how this town has impacted her family's life along with other residents. Her still photographs have a raw sense of strength and vulnerability juxtaposed in an honest and personal way.[22]

Informed by documentary practices from the turn of the last century, Frazier explores identities of place, race, and family in work that is a hybrid of self-portraiture and social narrative. The crumbling landscape of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a once-thriving steel town, forms the backdrop of her images, which make manifest both the environmental and infrastructural decay caused by postindustrial decline and the lives of those who continue—largely by necessity—to live amongst it.[23]

For the best information on her work and life, please refer to Frazier's website.

References

  1. ↑ Wexler, Laura (2014). "A Notion of Photography" in The Notion of Family. New York: Aperture. pp. 143–147. ISBN 978-1597112482.
  2. 1 2 Berger, Maurice (October 14, 2014). "LaToya Ruby Frazier’s Notion of Family". New York Times. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
  3. ↑ "LaToya Ruby Frazier: A visual history of inequality in industrial America". TED Talks. March 2015. Retrieved September 30, 2015.
  4. ↑ "ICP Infinity Awards: On location with LaToya". MediaStorm. May 1, 2015. Retrieved September 30, 2015.
  5. ↑ "MacArthur Fellows Program, LaToya Ruby Frazier". MacArthur Foundation. September 28, 2015. Retrieved September 30, 2015.
  6. 1 2 O'Regan, Kristen (April 17, 2013). "These Dark Histories". Guernica. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  7. ↑ "LaToya Ruby Frazier". The Center for Photography at Woodstock. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  8. ↑ "The Notion of Family: Photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier". Aperture. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  9. ↑ "The Generational Triennial: Younger Than Jesus". New Museum. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  10. ↑ "Greater New York: 2010". MoMA PS1. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  11. ↑ "2011 Incheon Women Artists Biennial". IWAB. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  12. ↑ "2012 Whitney Biennial". Whitney Museum. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  13. ↑ "LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital". Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  14. ↑ "LaToya Ruby Frazier-The Notion of Family - Aperture Foundation". aperture.org. Retrieved 2016-01-26.
  15. ↑ "LaToya Ruby Frazier". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  16. ↑ "Meet the TED Fellows". TED. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  17. ↑ "International Center of Photography Announces 2015 Infinity Awards Winners" (PDF). International Center of Photography. Retrieved March 7, 2015.
  18. ↑ Smydo, Joe (September 29, 2015). "Braddock artist wins MacArthur Foundation 'genius' grant". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved September 30, 2015.
  19. ↑ "LaToya Ruby Frazier — MacArthur Foundation". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2016-01-26.
  20. ↑ Roelstraete, Dieter (2014). The Way of the Shovel. University of Chicago Press. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-226-09412-0.
  21. ↑ "Braddock, Pennsylvania". Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
  22. ↑ Cornell, editor, Lauren (2009). Younger Than Jesus: The Generation Book. Germany: Steidl, New Museum New York. pp. 102–103. ISBN 978-3-86521-867-4.
  23. ↑ "News | LaToya Ruby Frazier". www.latoyarubyfrazier.com. Retrieved 2016-03-05.

External links

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