Family Life In A Forgotten Industrial Town

LaToya Ruby Frazier Photographs:
‘A Haunted Capital’ Captures Family Life In A Forgotten Industrial Town
Huffington Post
Huffpost Arts & Culture
March 24, 2013

LaToya Ruby Frazier has fierce ties to her roots. The artist grew up in Braddock, Pennsylvania — the site of one of America’s first steel mills.

In a new show at the Brooklyn Museum, “A Haunted Capital,” Frazier’s photographs of Braddock display a town left in the dust after the advent of the digital age. The black-and-white images, which were actually taken within the last 10 years, look as if they are decades old. Yet the striking photographs breathe life back into the abandoned town, bringing a spotlight to the real faces and homes of the contemporary town.

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Fighting to save a family in a dying steel town

Fighting to save a family in a dying steel town
Raymond McCrea Jones
CNN Photos
March 22, 2013

LaToya Ruby Frazier describes her work as “blurring the line between self-portraiture and social documentary.”

Her method of collaborating with the people she photographs, often her family, as well as voluntarily becoming the subject herself, is readily apparent in her latest exhibit, “A haunted capital.”

At the heart of Frazier’s work is a deep interest in the complex relationship between mother and daughter, she says, which is represented through interactions between herself, her mother and her grandmother.

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A Poem to New York

In Rome Exhibition, a Poem to New York
The New York Times
Ted Loos
March 20, 2013

NEW York’s role as the ruling city of the art world has held steady since at least the middle of the 20th century. Next month, a new exhibition about the city’s ever-growing and constantly shifting art scene is opening in the capital of a much older empire: Rome.
“Empire State,” featuring the work of more than 25 New York artists, opens in Rome’s Palazzo delle Esposizioni on April 22 and runs until July 21.

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Haunted: Q&A with LaToya Ruby Frazier

Haunted: Q&A with LaToya Ruby Frazier
Art In America
Greg Lindquist
March 19, 2013

“A Haunted Capital,” LaToya Ruby Frazier’s first New York solo exhibition, opens Mar. 22 at the Brooklyn Museum. Frazier’s work, addressing her hometown of Braddock, Pa., near Pittsburgh, has taken many forms as she has moved from photography to performance, documentary to activism. She is known primarily for black-and-white portraits of herself and her extended family.

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LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital

LaToya Ruby Frazier (American, b. 1982). Grandma Ruby and Me, 2005. Gelatin silver photograph, 15 1/2 x 18 1/2 in. (39.4 x 47 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Emily Winthrop Miles Fund, 2011.63.1. © LaToya Ruby Frazier

Brooklyn Museum Exhibitions
LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital

March 22–August 11, 2013
Mezzanine Gallery, 2nd Floor

LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital uses social documentary and portraiture to create a personal visual history of an industrial town’s decline. Through approximately 40 photographic works of her family and their hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, Frazier offers an intimate exploration of the effects of deindustrialization on the lives of individuals and communities. Home to one of America’s first steel mills, Braddock now has a population below 2,500 and has been declared a “distressed municipality.”

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