Whitney Museum artist profile

LaToya Ruby Frazier at Occupy Wall Street

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s photographs cover three bodies of work that revolve around her hometown, Braddock, Pennsylvania. The working-class suburb of Pittsburgh thrived in the first half of the twentieth century as home to a large Andrew Carnegie–owned steel mill. With the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s, however, Braddock entered a long and ongoing period of economic crisis. The Notion Of Family (2002– ), perhaps Frazier’s best-known work to date, is an ongoing series of searing black-and-white photographs documenting the artist’s family, one of the many that has borne the brunt of the town’s social, economic, and environmental decline.

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Courtesy of: Whitney Museum of Art, 2012 Biennial

When the Personal Turns Political

When the Personal Turns Political: LaToya Ruby Frazier at the Whitney Biennial

"Grandma Ruby and U.P.M.C.," 2011. From the series "Campaign for Braddock Hospital (Save Our Community Hospital)."

Time Magazine
Lightbox
Paul Moakley
February 29, 2012

 

From the outset of her career as a young artist, LaToya Ruby Frazier has always found inspiration at home. In thoughtfully constructed black and white photographs she began, in her teens, to document herself and her family life in Braddock, Pa.

“What’s the most intimate thing you can portray? For me, it’s myself,” she says.

The work Frazier has featured in the 2012 Whitney Biennial in New York City, which starts Thursday, builds on the classic documentary work she studied while in college at Syracuse University. Over time, the photographer, now 30, began to incorporate staged narratives and self-portraiture meant to challenge viewers with questions about the artist’s objectivity and representation, and that of her loved ones.

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NYT – Nerves of Steel

LaToya featured in Timely – The New York Times Style Magazine.

“Jenny Holzer’s Truism”

“Jenny Holzer’s Truism,” from the portfolio “Campaign for Braddock Hospital (Save Our Community Hospital),” 2011.

“If the individuals and families most affected during the Great Depression had photographed themselves instead of being shot by government-commissioned photographers,” asks the artist LaToya Ruby Frazier, “what would their own self-representation look like?”

More: NYTimes.com

Art21 – New York Close Up

LaToya is a featured artist on Art21’s online
documentary series New York Close Up.Art21 New York CLose Up

A New Documentary Series on Art and Life in the City…

“LaToya Ruby Frazier Makes Moving Pictures”

What makes a documentary radical? In this film, artist LaToya Ruby Frazier reveals the personal story behind a series of videos and photographs of her family in Braddock, Pennsylvania, a selection of which were exhibited in “Video Studio: Changing Same” at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

More about Art21: New York Close Up.

2011 Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale

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Terra Incognita
2011 Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale
Oct. 1 — Oct. 30, 2011
Incheon Culture & Arts Center

LaToya Ruby Frazier will be among 28 international artists from 13 countries featured in the 2011 Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale.

‘Terra Incognita’, the theme of 2011 Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale, is based on the concept of ‘Multiverse’. Multiverse (also called ‘Parallel Universes’) is a theory that our universe would be just one among infinite universes, and that within these, places could exist where our doubles reside and unknowingly mirror our actions.

More: 2011 Incheon Women Artists’ Biennale

The Impact of Kathe Kowalski

Honoring InsightHonoring Insight: The Impact of Kathe Kowalski

Work by LaToya Ruby Frazier 

Exhibition at Bruce Gallery
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
October 5-27, 2011