Latoya Ruby Frazier
LaToya Ruby Frazier is a photographer and activist who documents personal and social history in the United States, using photography, film, and performance. Her photographs show her family and neighborhood while addressing concerns of class, race, healthcare, and environmental devastation. Frazier combined brutal depictions of the underlying facts with propagandized slogans depicting a country of possibility.
Frazier’s work is both deeply personal and politically charged. She utilizes photographs to highlight the injustices experienced by underrepresented groups, notably those in her hometown of Braddock. The work of Frazier is a reflection on the status of the world and how it affects the people in her community. She utilizes the hardships of individuals who are living in poverty and the effects it has on their families.
On the left: Grandma Ruby Smoking Pall Malls, 2002
In 1982, LaToya Ruby Frazier was born in Braddock. Growing up in her grandmother’s home in Braddock’s poorest area, known as the Bottom because to its lower altitude and closeness to the steel mill and railroad, Frazier was an eager drawing and watercolor artist.
Frazier started taking pictures of her friends, family, and neighborhood in high school after obtaining a digital camera. When she was 16, Frazier moved to Pennsylvania and enrolled at Edinboro University, where she studied under Kathe Kowalski, who encouraged her passion for photography and introduced her to the works of writers James Baldwin and Roland Barthes as well as photographers Julia Margaret Cameron and Carrie Mae Weems. Frazier earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography and graphic design from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2004. She then earned a Master of Fine Art in photography from Syracuse University's Department of Visual and Performing Arts in 2007. The Notion of Family, Frazier's debut book, which won the International Center for Photography Infinity Prize, was released in 2014.
On the right: Zion, Her Mother Shea, and Her Grandfather Mr. Doug Smiley Riding on Their Tennessee Walking Horses, Mares, PT (PT’s Miss One of a Kind), Dolly (Secretly) and Blue (Blues Royal Threat), Newton, Mississippi, from the series Flint is Family, Part II, 2017
From the social filmmakers of the 1930s to the conceptual artwork created by artists like Alan Sekula and Martha Rosler in the 1970s, Frazier's work displays her many interests and influences. Yet the work of Black American photographer and director Gordon Parks continues to be her inspiration.
On the left: Shea doing crochet braids in her cousin Andrea’s hair for Andrea’s daughter’s wedding, 2016 - 2017
Frazier teaches photography at the Art Institute of Chicago and is the associate curator for the Mason Gross galleries. Her work is also included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial.
On the right: Grandma Ruby and Me, 2005
“I’m really sensitive about people saying that I’m a Black artist making work about being Black. No, I’m not. I’m an American artist making work about America and the crisis in this country.”
On the left: Self Portrait (March 10 am), 2009