‘BlacKkKlansman’ Movie Poster
Isn’t Pulling Any Punches

LaToya Ruby Frazier photographed actor John David Washington for Spike Lee’s movie poster BlackkKlansman with Focus Features film company.


COLLIDER
May 17, 2018
by David Trumbore

There’s an old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. In movie marketing terms, a well-designed poster could well be worth millions of dollars. There are few better examples of 2018 movie posters that communicate the story, style, and tone more effectively than a synopsis ever could than this new poster for Spike Lee’s provocative new title, BlacKkKlansman.

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Courtesy of: COLLIDER

Courtesy of: Connect The Dots, Inc.

18 Photographers’ Portraits of Their Moms, From Loving to Unapologetic

Momme (2018). Photograph by Latoya Ruby Frazier

Momme (2018). Photograph by Latoya Ruby Frazier. “Momme 2018 is an anniversary self-portrait remake of Momme 2008 from a decade earlier. It marks the one-year anniversary of my mother’s survival on life support. With our noses, lips, and eyes almost aligned, it signifies how we took courage and remained steadfast in the midst of all the hatred, brutality, injustice, and inequality we’ve endured as Black working-class women from southwestern Pennsylvania. Our bond and camaraderie are fire-proof. I have an awesome and creative mother. This work would not be possible without her love and support.” —Latoya Ruby Frazier

W Magazine
Mother’s Day
May 13, 2018
by Stephanie Eckardt and Michael Beckert

“I want my parents to live forever,” the late photographer Larry Sultan, who died in 2009, once said of his storied photographs of his mother and father that made up his ’90s series and effort to “to stop time,” Pictures From Home. Thanks to the continued legacy of his photos, he’s in fact succeeded in doing so. So have, and will, so many other photographers who’ve turned to their parents—and particularly their mothers—as subjects, whether as documentation or simply appreciation, as evidenced here in a Mother’s Day showcase of the moms of everyone from Tina Barney, a similarly film-still-minded photographer, to up-and-comers like Olivia Bee, who, amidst all the pink hair dye and makeout sessions she’s captured as part of her acclaimed series on adolescence, has recognized the importance of teens’ relationships with their parents in that time, too. Indeed, no matter their age, their generation, or their reasoning—from the intimacy of Charlie Engman and Lauren Withrow’s topless portraiture, to Ryan James Caruther’s tribute to memories like how his mom once accidentally left a meatloaf in the oven for seven days—throughout the years, turning their lens toward motherhood has proven to be something they can all agree on.

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Courtesy of: W Magazine

“This Is the Truth”: LaToya Ruby Frazier Speaks about Art and Social Justice

Guggenheim Museum
April 27, 2018
by Jane Lerner

Artist LaToya Ruby Frazier is a social documentarian whose body of work directly addresses injustice, inequality, and our deepest humanity. A professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a passionate activist and advocate, her video, performance, and photography projects focus on the realities of working-class and impoverished communities. Frazier grew up in Braddock, Pennsylvania, a Rust Belt town outside of Pittsburgh, where she maintains deep roots. Her best-known project, The Notion of Family, is a 14-year-long series of portraits of a hometown long in decline, evidence of a system stacked against its inhabitants. These are intimate and affecting photos of her own family that tell a larger, longer story of racism and disenfranchisement in America.

A photograph from The Notion of Family series is part of the Guggenheim Museum’s permanent collection, and Frazier has been awarded many important prizes, including the MacArthur “genius grant.” Yet, the artist says, “No matter how many accolades or awards I have, I’m not safe because of what I look like and represent in this country.” For a recent talk with the Guggenheim’s Photography Council and Patrons Circle at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in Harlem, Frazier guided the group through the three floors of her first New York solo show. Here, we share a few of her powerful thoughts from that visit—on her work and life, her politics, her family and friends, and her deep commitment to social documentary work and social justice.

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Courtesy of: Guggenheim Museum

“LaToya Ruby Frazier: Artist as Advocate” Whitewall Magazine interview

Portrait by Steve Benisty

Portrait by Steve Benisty

Whitewall Magazine
April 27, 2018
by Katy Donoghue

LaToya Ruby Frazier: Artist as Advocate

LaToya Ruby Frazier is an advocate. Through her work—in photography, video, and the written word—she’s made visible the untold stories of her hometown devastated by the loss of the steel industry; a family in Flint, Michigan, affected by the water crisis; former miners of Le Grand-Hornu in Belgium; and her own family.

She realized the potential of her artmaking when she saw Gordon Parks’s photograph American Gothic for the first time. Realizing that she could craft social commentary in her practice was a revelation. That pursuit earned her a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2015; exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, and the ICA in Boston; and several shows in Europe.

Early this year, she opened her first show in New York since 2013. Taking over three floors of Gavin Brown’s enterprise in Harlem were three bodies of work: “The Notion of Family” (2001–2014), “A Pilgrimage to Noah Purifoy’s Desert Art Museum” (2016–2017), and “Flint Is Family” (2016–2017).

Whitewall spoke with Frazier about the power and beauty in honoring other people’s humanity.

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Courtesy of: Whitewall

Flint, 1,462 Days and Counting Man-Made Water Crisis, 2018

Flint, 1,462 days and Counting Man-Made Water Crisis, 2018

LaToya Ruby Frazier asks for justice for the communities in Flint, Michigan, with a flag that reminds us of the number of days residents have been living without water as of April 25th, 2018. The photograph is from her 2016 work Flint is Family, where Frazier spent five months with three generations of Flint women who suffer and still thrive as they face the water crisis in Flint–“the worst man-made environmental catastrophe in recent national memory.”

Frazier states: “The number 1,462 is the exact amount of days Flint residents have lived without new pipes since the lead leaching took place. (And yes, that is a real photograph I took in Flint, where they were keeping locked up pipes behind barbed wire.)
Exact location and company:
American Pipe
4906 Horton Avenue, Flint MI 48505″

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s FLINT, 1,462 days and counting man-made water crisis is on view April 25th – May 16th, 2018 at:
– Creative Time Headquarters, 59 East 4th Street, NY, NY
– 21C Museum Hotel Durham, 111 Corcoran St, Durham, NC
– Atlanta Contemporary, 535 Means Street, NW, Atlanta, GA
– The Commons, in partnership with the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1340 Jayhawk Blvd, Lawrence, KS
– Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, 114 Central Ave, Ithaca, NY
– John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University, 357 Benefit Street, Providence, RI
– KMAC Museum, 715 W Main St, Louisville, KY
– MASS MoCA, 1040 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams, MA
– Mann Library, Ag Quad, Cornell University, 237 Mann Drive, Ithaca, NY
– Mid-America Arts Alliance, 2018 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO
– Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 4454 Woodward Ave, Detroit, MI
– RISD Museum, 224 Benefit Street, Providence, RI
– SPACE, 536 Congress Street, Portland, ME
– Texas State Galleries, 233 West Sessom Drive, San Marcos, TX
– The Union for Contemporary Art, 2423 N 24th Street, Omaha, NE
– University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, 3821 USF Holly Drive, Tampa, FL
– Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ

 

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Courtesy of: CreativeTime.org

A Matter of Life & Death – “Leading Edge” segment on PBS News Hour

Leading Edge PBS News Hour

“Leading Edge” segment on PBS News Hour. Photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier.

PBS News Hour
April 18, 2018
Judy Woodruff and Amna Nawaz, PBS News Hour
Linda Villarosa, contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine
Monica Simpson, executive director of Sistersong
Photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier

Why are black mothers and infants far more likely to die in U.S. from pregnancy-related causes?

Judy Woodruff:

The United States has a problem with maternal mortality, and it’s one that’s been getting worse.

The U.S. is one of only 13 countries where the death rate is worse now than it was 25 years ago, and among the worst of wealthiest countries in the world. Between 700 and 900 American women die each year from problems related to pregnancy, childbirth or complications up to a year later.

There are as many as 50,000 cases annually where women face dangerous and even life-threatening situations.

As part of our ongoing series Race Matters, Amna Nawaz looks at why it is dramatically worse among African-American women.

It’s the focus of this week’s segment the Leading Edge.

Amna Nawaz:

And the statistics are stunning. Black infants are more than twice as likely to die than white infants, a racial disparity that is wider today than in 1850, 15 years before the end of slavery. And black women are three to four times as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women.

For a closer look at what’s behind those numbers, we turn to Linda Villarosa. Her in-depth report on the subject ran in “The New York Times Magazine.” And Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, the country’s largest organization dedicated to reproductive justice for women of color. In 2014, she testified before the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Linda and Monica, welcome to the “NewsHour.”

Watch the segment or read the full transcript

Courtesy of: PBS News Hour