LaToya speaking at SPE

SPE“The Notion of Family”

Thursday, March 09, 2017
Guest Speaker LaToya Ruby Frazier at 7:00pm – Orange Ballroom
Book signing at 8:00pm – Orange Foyer

In this talk, LaToya Ruby Frazier discusses how she has used photography to fight injustice—poverty, healthcare and gender inequality, environmental contamination, racism, and more—and create a more representative self-portrait. Drawing from her book, “The Notion of Family” as well as from works of art by Gordon Parks with Ralph Ellison, August Sander, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Langston Hughes, she relates her conscious approach to photography, opens up more authentic ways to talk about family, inheritance, and place, and celebrates the inspirational, transformative power of images.

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Exhibition at Caracas Belgium

LaToya Ruby Frazier (b. 1982, USA) continues to show the representation of the working classes, a tradition begun in the 1930s by the likes of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks, in her latest exhibition Et des terrils un arbre s’elevera (And a tree grew up from the coal tips). Her political commitment and her fight against social inequalities are depicted through her photographs, which are now on exhibit at Caracas Belgium until May 21, 2017.

Latoya Ruby Frazier - Impact of Industry at Caracas Belgium

Frazier’s images show her examination of the history of the Borinage, a region whose fate and inhabitants, like those of her own family, have been greatly impacted by the collapse of heavy industry. Through encounters with former miners and their families, Frazier bears witness to their life experiences through the photographs made jointly with them. Long interviews preceded the various encounters that brought to light a series of details and anecdotes. These then enabled the artist to structure the photographs that she subsequently took; the places, objects and directions of gazes were determined by the stories she was told.

By: Matthew Barlow. Courtesy of: GUP Magazine

Carrying the Legacies of Documentary Photographer Icons

Lomography Magazine on LaToya Ruby Frazier’s recent exhibition at the Musée des Arts Contemporains, Le Grand Hornu in Brussels.

“The recent history of Braddock, a district in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has been plagued with issues of unemployment surges, poverty, demographic migration, disease outbreaks, hospital closures, drug use in the countryside. It is referenced to the lower part of the city, the poorest and closest to the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, known for the steel factory of Andrew Carnegie.”

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Courtesy of: Lomography.com

Musée des Arts Contemporains

LaToya Ruby Frazier, And From The Coaltips A Tree Will Rise

Outraged by the closure of Braddock’s only hospital in 2010 and by the following use of this “ghost town” as the setting for jeans commercial, LaToya Ruby Frazier became increasingly more activist and conjointly condemned the cynical abandon of her city by public powers and its opportunistic reconquest through the gentrification of its deserted neighborhoods. Internationally recognized today, the artist was the winner of the 2015 MacArthur Fellows Program. Last year, her residency at MAC’s gave her the opportunity, in Borinage, to pursue, through other industrial landscapes, stories of workers, and family memories, her critical inquiry on postindustrial society. The exhibition, which opens this week at MAC’s, is presenting the series And From The Coaltips A Tree Will Rise, the result of this residency, which will be discussed along with the older series dedicated to the industrial decline of her hometown (Braddock, in the Rust Belt region).

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LaToya Ruby Frazier - And from the Coaltips a Tree Will Rise

Latoya Ruby Frazier, And From The Coaltips A Tree Will Rise
Musée des Arts Contemporains (MAC’S)
February 19 through May 21, 2017
Site du Grand-Hornu
Rue Sainte-Louise, 82
B-7301 Hornu
Belgium
www.mac-s.be

Courtesy of: L’oeil De La Photographie

“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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