“Et des terrils, un arbre s’élèvera” at MAC’s

The Museum of Contemporary Arts of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation announces the exhibition byLaToya Ruby Frazier titled Et des terrils, un arbre s’élèvera [And From the Coal Tips a Tree Will Rise] on view from 19 February to 21 May 2017.

“LaToya Ruby Frazier grew up in Braddock, in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, at the heart of the Rust Belt. […] Braddock’s recent history, forged by resurgent waves of unemployment, mounting poverty, demographic decline, the appearance of diseases, hospital closures, are inscribed on the bodies and landscapes which LaToya Ruby Frazier juxtaposes in The Notion of Family. Laying claim to the heritage of socio-documentary photography initiated by the FSA (Farm Security Administration), LaToya Ruby Frazier adds to this archive of working-class reality begun in the 1930s by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and others, capturing the town’s and her own family’s history from the inside—which is what makes her work unique.”

Frazier at Museum of Contemporary Arts of Wallonia-Brussels

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Not Just Flint: Water Crises and Inequality in the United States

LaToya at Trinity InstituteTED Fellow and MacArthur Fellow, LaToya Ruby Frazier, will be the keynote speaker at the Trinity Institute Dialogue #2 “Not Just Flint: Water Crises and Inequality in the United States”

A year after the news about toxic water in Flint, Michigan broke nationally, it’s clear that for millions of Americans – particularly in poor and marginalized communities, both urban and rural – safe water and sanitation are increasingly unaffordable. This one-day event will bring together keynote speakers, panelists, and original video to show what is happening now in Flint and surfacing in other communities and to spark dialogue about how faith communities can make a difference.

Trinity Institute Dialogue #2
Not Just Flint: Water Crises and Inequality in the United States
Saturday, February 4, 2017, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm EST
Live in Trinity Church, New York

Keynote: LaToya Ruby Frazier, TED Fellow and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow
Panelists: Ibrahim Abdul-Matin – Founder of Brooklyn Academy for Science and the Environment
Catherine Coleman Flowers – Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise, Lowndes County, Alabama
Amanda Ford – Equal Justice Coalition for Water, California
Caleen Sisk – Spiritual Leader and Tribal Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, McCloud River watershed

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LaToya to speak at The Art Institute of Chicago

LaToya Ruby Frazier at The Art Institute of Chicago

Photo by Robbie Fimmano

Lecture: An Evening with LaToya Ruby Frazier

LaToya Ruby Frazier, photographer and 2015 MacArthur fellow, discusses her work—personal, incisive explorations of issues surrounding race, representation, and social justice in places such as Flint, Michigan and her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania.

January 26, 2017
6:00pm–7:00pm
Fullerton Hall
Art Institute of Chicago
Free with museum admission

Seating is limited and first come, first served.

Presented by the Photography Associates

To Fight Trump, First Learn How to See

Artists Carrie Mae Weems and LaToya Ruby Frazier discuss creating art in 2017.

Carrie Mae Weems, Sarah Lewis, and LaToya Ruby Frazier

L to R: Carrie Mae Weems, Sarah Lewis, LaToya Ruby Frazier.
Stephanie Black / The Green Space at WNYC


by Mattie Kahn, ELLE
Jan 11, 2017

Hosted by Rebecca Carroll, WNYC producer for special projects on race, photographers LaToya Ruby Frazier and Carrie Mae Weems; and Harvard University art history professor Sarah Lewis, engage in a discussion on celebrating and advancing visual literacy around race, and what it feels like to be American and black during this dichotomous time of triumph and tragedy.

LaToya Frazier - Flint Is Family

©LaToya Ruby Frazier. From the series “Flint Is Family,” 2016

Like Weems, fellow MacArthur “Genius” Award winner LaToya Ruby Frazier has devoted her career to explorations of power and oppression. And she isn’t prepared to accept a post-election imperative that puts the onus on people of color to reach out to racists and bigots. “[We’re] always being asked to forgive, always being told to be silent, always being told…to try to empathize with our oppressors and the people that have murdered us for centuries,” she said. “It’s enough.” She wants, she said, to save her energies for the work that matters, to keep her focus on the most marginalized Americans—on poor people, minorities, women.

Carroll stressed that this commitment to seek justice in art isn’t new. Art offers, she wrote in a follow-up email, “an inimitable, one-time only, capsule piece of nonfiction.” We have to keep looking for new ways to create these capsules, Lewis insisted, and to look for ways to progress.

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Courtesy of:
ELLE.com and The Green Space at WNYC

Juxtapoz features “THE NOTION OF FAMILY”

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s award-winning first book, The Notion of Family, offers an incisive exploration of the legacy of racism and economic decline in America’s small towns, as embodied by her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania.

The work also considers the impact of that decline on the community and on her family, creating a statement both personal and truly political— an intervention in the histories and narratives of the region. Frazier has compellingly set her story of three generations—her Grandma Ruby, her mother, and herself— against larger questions of civic belonging and responsibility.

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Aperture releases “The Notion Of Family” in paperback

The Notion of Family paperback

The Notion Of Family
Photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier
Interview by Dawoud Bey Essays by Laura Wexler and Dennis C. Dickerson

Now available in a paperback edition, LaToya Ruby Frazier’s award-winning first book, The Notion Of Family, offers an incisive exploration of the legacy of racism and economic decline in America’s small towns, as embodied by her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. The work also considers the impact of that decline on the community and on her family, creating a statement both personal and truly political— an intervention in the histories and narratives of the region.

See more on Aperture.org