The End of the Line: What Happens to a Factory Town When the Factory Shuts Down?

The New York Times Photo Essay and Interviews by LaToya Ruby Frazier

Louis Robinson Jr., 77
Recording secretary for Local 1714 of the United Auto Workers from 1999 to 2018

“One mistake the international unions in the United States made was when Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. When he did that, the unions could have brought this country to a standstill. All they had to do was shut down the truck drivers for a month, because then people would not have been able to get the goods they needed. So that was one of the mistakes they made. They didn’t come together as organized labor and say: “No. We aren’t going for this. Shut the country down.” That’s what made them weak. They let Reagan get away with what he did. A little while after that, I read an article that said labor is losing its clout, and I noticed over the years that it did. It happened. It doesn’t feel good.”

With the minutes from a meeting of his union’s retirees’ chapter.

Dave Green, 49 President of Local 1112 of the United Auto Workers

Dave Green, 49
President of Local 1112 of the United Auto Workers

Unions aren’t just about making more money. It’s about having a seat at the table. It’s about having the ability to talk to your employer and be respected, having some dignity in work, having some dignity and respect in what you do.

People keep saying: “Well, I feel sorry for you. Your plant’s closed.” It ain’t closed! It’s unallocated! If the company would come out and tell us that the plant is closed, then I could process what I would think about my kids and where they’re going, and about my parents and how they’re feeling, and about what plant I could go to. But I can’t think that far ahead because I’m not in a position to leave. I can’t transfer out right now. I ran for this job 10 months ago, and I got elected. I’m going to leave now? I have to wait until all this plays out.

What the hell does “unallocated” even mean? I don’t know. We have specific language in our national agreement that talks about a “closed” plant status and an “idled” plant status, but there’s not any language that talks about “unallocated.” So they’ve come up with this word to put us in a situation where: A, the contractual language doesn’t fit for this specific situation, and B, they’re kind of skirting their obligations, right? If we were in closed-plant status, there would actually be more benefits for our members right now. But we’re not.

So I’m going to ride this out, and if the plant does close, I’ll figure it out then. If it doesn’t, then I’ll stay here and get to give good news to people. That’s the hope.

With his daughters, Alison and Cate, and parents, Elaine and Roger.

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Courtesy of: The New York Times

LaToya Ruby Frazier – The Last Cruze

The Renaissance Society presents a new body of work by acclaimed artist LaToya Ruby Frazier, The Last Cruze, centered on the workers at the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio.

LaToya Ruby Frazier, The Last Cruze 2019
LaToya Ruby Frazier, Eugene (Red) Adams, Eugene Jr. (Andy) Adams, Bill Adams And Dan Adams, The Last Cruze 2019. Courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise New York | Rome.

After more than fifty years of auto production, and a current commitment to manufacture the Chevrolet Cruze until 2021, the facility has recently been “unallocated” by GM. Employees have been given the choice to relocate to another plant in a different part of the country, but those who don’t want to be uprooted will be cut off from the company, losing their pensions and health care. For now, the plant is idle and the workers’ lives are on hold, as they wait for General Motors’ negotiations with the union to begin in September. During this period of high uncertainty and change, Frazier has been in Lordstown with the workers and their families, collaborating with them to record their stories. A selection of these images and interviews is presented in a photo-essay in the May 5 issue of The New York Times Magazine.

Featuring photographs and other audio-visual elements, The Last Cruze introduces a significant new chapter in Frazier’s investigations of labor, family, community, and working-class lives across a wide variety of geographic settings—from Flint, Michigan and the Borinage mining region in Belgium to her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. The developments in Lordstown have brought wide-spread attention to the small Rust Belt town, which has emerged as a political flashpoint and been cited as symptomatic of shifting economic trends. Timely and nuanced, Frazier’s new work in Lordstown creates a platform for the workers who are directly affected by the plant’s changing status, bringing forward their own relationships to an urgent subject that connects the local, national, and global.

A monograph with multiple new essays, published by the Renaissance Society, will accompany the exhibition.

The Last Cruze is curated by Solveig Øvstebø and Karsten Lund.

Sep 14 – Dec 1, 2019 LaToya Ruby Frazier – The Last Cruze

Opening reception / Artist Talk Saturday, Sep. 14 5–8pm

THE RENAISSANCE SOCIETY
University of Chicago
5811 South Ellis Avenue
Cobb Hall, 4th Floor
Chicago, Illinois 60637

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Courtesy of: THE RENAISSANCE SOCIETY

LaToya Ruby Frazier to receive Honorary Doctorate

Edinboro welcomes MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship recipient as spring commencement speaker

LaToya Ruby Frazier, an internationally recognized visual artist and social justice advocate, will return to her alma mater to deliver the commencement address at Edinboro University’s undergraduate ceremony on Saturday, May 4.

Frazier, who earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts – Applied Media Arts from Edinboro in 2004, will also receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters during the ceremony.

Chosen by Ebony as one of the 100+ Most Powerful Women of All Time, Frazier uses photography, video and performance art to capture the effects of economic erosion, racism, healthcare inequality and environmental toxicity in post-industrial cities. Her compositions aim to combat social injustice by amplifying the voices of marginalized and vulnerable populations.

She has earned numerous recognitions throughout her career, including the International Center for Photography Infinity Award, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, one of the most notable intellectual and creative fellowship awards in the world.

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Courtesy of: Edinboro University News

NY magazine to feature UAW 1112

Tribune Chronicle
by Ron Selak Jr.

Show of labor unity

NORTH JACKSON — When well-known photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier let it be known she would be above the United Auto Workers Local 1112 hall in a helicopter to take photos of the building’s exterior for a magazine cover, local UAW leaders thought they could do better.

They put their heads together and decided to blast out to the union’s members an invitation to come to the hall on Reuther Drive SW to form a human wheel around the circle and flags in the parking lot.

The message through the union’s alert system was sent somewhere between 11 and 11:30 a.m. Thursday. They figured they needed about 75 people to form the circle.

About three hours later, at least a couple hundred local members created in the circle with UAW banners and also signs, some from the Drive It Home Ohio campaign and some homemade.

The high turnout shows “they are concerned, want to come out, want to support,” said UAW Local 1112 President Dave Green. “They believe in the cause, they believe we can get a product here. We’re doing everything we can to push on and push forward and keep hope alive. We are not giving up.”

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Courtesy of: Tribune Chronicle

NYC-ARTS Profile: LaToya Ruby Frazier

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

Iconic 20th Century Images, Reinvented

A History Lesson From Angela Bassett, Spike Lee, Ruth E. Carter, and LaToya Ruby Frazier

Angela Bassett wears a Gucci dress; Bulgari bracelet.
Directed by Spike Lee; Photograph by LaToya Ruby Frazier;
Styled by Costume designer Ruth E. Carter. […]*

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

Posed in a setup often used by Irving Penn, one of Spike Lee’s favorite photographers, Bassett wears a Moschino gown and Moschino Couture gloves; Balenciaga earrings; Toni + Chloë Goutal necklace; stylist’s own stole. Directed by Spike Lee; Photograph by LaToya Ruby Frazier; Styled by Costume designer Ruth E. Carter.

*Produced by Meghan Gallagher at Connect the Dots; Production Manager: Jane Oh at Connect the Dots; Photography Assistants: J. Mims, Gregory Brouillette, Giancarlo D’Agastaro; Digital Technician: Adam Kryzer at Milk Studios; Retouching and digital production by black and white on white; Fashion Assistants: Allia Alliata di Montereale, Nadia Beeman, Sharon Chitrit; Set Assistants: Cory Bailey, Sara Gernsbacher, Andrew O’Connell, Brian Rothlisberger, Derek Milton; Production Assistants: Nikki Patrilja, Jeremy Sinclair; Tailor: Carolina Glover. Hair by Randy Stodghill for Oribe at Opus Beauty; Makeup by D’Andre Michael for Dior Beauty; Manicure by Ashley V. Williams for DND. Set design by Gille Mills at the Magnet Agency.