NYC-ARTS and WNET Thirteen presents a profile of photographer and video artist LaToya Ruby Frazier, whose work follows in the social documentary tradition of Walker Evans and Gordon Parks.
Courtesy of: NYC-ARTS.org
Aired: 2/7/2019 on Thirteen|WNET New York Public Media
Spike Lee needed a queen. Three queens, in fact. One in front of the camera, one behind it, another to make sure everything looked and felt just so. As a filmmaker who has been tackling racism in America for more than 30 years, Lee has often strived to do many things at once: mix comedy and drama, satire with seriousness, and brazenly resurrect the past, as he did with his latest movie, BlacKkKlansman, in order to forcefully comment on the present. His approach to directing a fashion shoot—a fashion joint, this being a Lee production—was no different. He saw it as an opportunity to pay homage to two lifelong sources of inspiration: famous photographers who have powerfully captured black iconography of the past century, and the timeless power of black women.
Hence the three queens he had gathered inside a photo studio in Hollywood.
There was Angela Bassett, the actress, whom Lee first directed in Malcolm X, and whom he had chosen specifically for her imperial charisma. “So regal, so majestic,” Lee remarked. There was LaToya Ruby Frazier, the artist acclaimed for her work exploring the intersection of race, family, and place, who also shot the movie posters for BlacKkKlansman. And styling the proceedings was Ruth E. Carter, Lee’s costume designer since School Daze, his second feature, whose intricate work on Black Panther helped give the blockbuster its singular aesthetic and earned her an Oscar nomination. Together, they would spend the day paying tribute to some of Lee’s favorite photographers, including those in his personal collection, like James Van Der Zee, Irving Penn, and Gordon Parks, the late director of the original Shaft, and a hero of Lee’s. The idea was not so much to re-create celebrated images as to channel them into something new, with Bassett starring in a variety of shape-shifting roles—formidable diva, bohemian temptress—as the director saw fit. […]
“When I really like people’s work, and there’s an opportunity to work with them, I love doing it,” Lee said, explaining that he saw Frazier’s photography as an extension of the same lineage they were now celebrating. “Simply put, she’s killing it.”
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Courtesy of: W Magazine
LaToya Ruby Frazier’s portrait of Simone Landrum at home with her sons, Dillon (left) and Caden, during her pregnancy, November 2017.
Artforum
The Year In Review
December 2018
By Lanka Tattersall
[…]
An unsettling, urgent, and deeply instructive piece of journalism—essential reading for everyone thinking about race, gender, healthcare, or inequality. Villarosa explores why black women are at least three times as likely as white women to die from pregnancy related causes in the United States, a crisis that cuts across social economic differences. Frazier’s photographs document the relationship among a mother, her children, and her doula, and capture how expanded forms of family can effectively support a healthy birth in the face of profound risks.
Courtesy of: Artforum
“Shea brushing Zion’s teeth with bottled water in her bathroom” (2016/2017)
Miami’s Community Newspapers
December 21, 2018
By: News Travels Fast
The photographer and MacArthur Fellow spent five months with three generations of women – the poet Shea Cobb, Shea’s mother, Renée Cobb, and her daughter, Zion – living in Flint, witnessing their day to day lives as they endured one of the most devastating man-made ecological crises in U.S. history. Citing Gordon Parks’ and Ralph Ellison’s 1948 collaboration “Harlem is Nowhere” as an influence, she utilized mass media as an outlet to reach a broad audience, publishing her images of Flint in conjunction with a special feature on the water crisis in Elle magazine in 2016. Like Parks, Frazier uses the camera as a weapon and agent of social change.
Courtesy of: Miami’s Community Newspapers
LaToya Ruby Frazier (John D. & Catherine MacArthur Foundation).
Case Western Reserve University
December 20, 2018
case.edu
Each year, Case Western Reserve University honors Martin Luther King Jr.—the holiday, the man and the legacy—with a celebration that includes a range of activities including workshops, films, panel discussions and acclaimed speakers. All members of the university and the community at large are invited to observe King’s holiday and recognize his commitment to social justice and global peace.
The 2019 celebration theme is “Through the Lens of Our Stories: The King Legacy Today.”
LaToya Ruby Frazier, acclaimed photographer and video artist, will headline the 2019 MLK Convocation on Friday, January 18 at 12:45 p.m. in the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Ballroom at the Tinkham Veale University Center on the campus of Case Western Reserve University.
Courtesy of: case.edu
Seth Murrell, a child with autism, and his family, photographed for the report “Georgia’s Separate and Unequal Special-Education System,” by Rachel Aviv. Photograph by LaToya Ruby Frazier for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
December 17, 2018
The photo team at The New Yorker assigned more breaking-news commissions this year than ever before. In October, the photojournalist Adriana Zehbrauskas accompanied the staff writer Jonathan Blitzer on a weeklong trip to follow the migrant caravan as it moved north through Mexico. During the midterms, the political photographer Mark Peterson captured, in one powerful image, the Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum in a voting booth with two of his small children standing by. And, after receiving a phone call from our director of photography late one evening in September, the photographer Benjamin Rasmussen woke up before dawn to take a portrait of Deborah Ramirez, who had told Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer of a college encounter with the Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Standing alone in the morning light, Ramirez exuded both quiet resilience and resignation, a poignant moment of calm in the midst of a chaotic and anguished nomination process.
Courtesy of: The New Yorker
