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.

Read more…

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

People Issue from Chicago Reader

Chicago Reader Interview by Aimee Levitt and Danielle A. Scruggs
Photos by Danielle A. Scruggs

Latoya Ruby Frazier at SAIC. Photo credit: Danielle A. Scruggs

“In form, Frazier’s black-and-white photographs echo the work of 1930s social documentarians. But, she says, “I’m not a social documentarian, I’m an artist speaking through photographs.” Unlike those older photographers, she belongs to the world she’s documenting: the body of work that generated her 2014 book The Notion of Family and won her a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2015 is an intensely personal look at how the departure of the steel industry decimated her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. Frazier, 34, came to Chicago to take a teaching job at the School of the Art Institute, but the prospect of greater racial segregation and economic inequality under a Trump administration makes her want to stay: “I understand why I’m here now.”

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Courtesy of: Chicago Reader’s People Issue

LaToya Ruby Frazier receives New Museum Next Gen Award

2016 NEXTGEN dinner honoring LaToya Ruby FrazierOn the “A” w/Souleo: Presidential Election Looms over New Museum Next Generation Dinner
by Peter “Souleo” Wright
11/7/16

There couldn’t be a more opportune time for the New Museum to honor photographer, LaToya Ruby Frazier than near the end of a tumultuous presidential election season. This past Friday in New York, Frazier was honored at the annual Next Gen dinner for her social and environmental justice driven work that explores political topics such as global warming, health care, and economic inequities.

Massimiliano Gioni, artistic director at the New Museum shared that Frazier’s work takes on added weight as voters head to the polls. “LaToya’s work forces institutions and people to be aware of their position and their responsibilities and consequences,” he said. “Sadly it’s very inspiring work during time of [the] election. It shouldn’t be but it is a reminder of what’s at stake.”

No matter which candidate wins the presidency, Frazier will continue exploring disadvantaged communities. Her next series, set to debut in a solo show in February 2017 at MAC’s in Belgium, investigates coal mining villages in the area. Again, it’s particularly timely as presidential candidate, Donald Trump has reportedly stated he would “save” the coal industry.

“You have Trump and [Mike] Pence running on a message that the U.S. has a war on coal. What I’m doing in this new series is interviewing and making collaborative photographs with people who are former coal miners from Belgium,” she said. “My work has taken on a cross-cultural conversation with coal juxtaposed to the 12 years I documented about what it means to be poor in a post-Reagan era in Braddock, Pennsylvania.” Frazier explained.

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Courtesy of: The Huffington Post