Interview carried out during the exhibition “LaToya Ruby Frazier, Performing Social Landscapes”
Carré d’Art – Contemporary Art Museum of Nîmes
October 16, 2015 – March 13, 2016
More information…
Courtesy of: Carré d’Art – Musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes
LaToya Ruby Frazier on The Artist Project, a 2015 video series produced by The Met (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) in which artists are given an opportunity to respond to their encyclopedic collection. LaToya comments on Red Jackson, 1948 by Gordon Parks (American, 1912–2006).
“There’s tremendous beauty in people’s pain and their suffering.”
– LaToya Ruby Frazier
Courtesy of The Met – September 15, 2015
In mini-docu style, editor and producer, Tim McLaughlin, connects his video footage with LaToya’s photographs by filming on location in Braddock, Pennsylvania. LaToya’s photographs are rooted in a sense of place, and McLaughlin felt the town was as much of a character in her work as her family.
LaToya Ruby Frazier ’s body of work “The Notion Of Family” examines the impact of the steel industry and health care system on the community of Braddock, PA. See the project at http://mediastorm.com/clients/2015-icp-infinity-awards-publication-latoya-ruby-frazier
For the last 12 years, LaToya Ruby Frazier has photographed friends, neighbors and family in Braddock, Pennsylvania. But though the steel town has lately been hailed as a posterchild of “rustbelt revitalization,” Frazier’s pictures tell a different story, of the real impact of inequality and environmental toxicity.
“A visual history of inequality in industrial America” by LaToya Ruby Frazier – Courtesy of TED.com
[The Aperture Foundation] sat down with LaToya Ruby Frazier to discuss the realization of her first book, The Notion Of Family, which 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.
Twelve years in the making, the work compellingly sets her story of three generations—her Grandma Ruby, her mother, and herself—against larger questions of civic belonging and responsibility. Since beginning the work as a teenager, Frazier has enlisted the participation of her family—and her mother in particular. These images acknowledge and expand upon the traditions of classic black-and-white documentary photography, and are themselves transformative acts, resetting traditional power dynamics and narratives, both those of her family and those of the community at large.
“The Notion Of Family” by LaToya Ruby Frazier is available for purchase here: bit.ly/1kfpabj
Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties
March 7 – July 6, 2014
Published on May 15, 2014
Artists, including those featured in the exhibition Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties, come together for a series of intergenerational conversations and performances dealing with the challenges of cultural activism during the Civil Rights era and today.
Roundtable with Witness artists Jack Whitten, Bruce Davidson, and Mark di Suvero and artists LaToya Ruby Frazier and Abigail DeVille; moderated by Teresa A. Carbone, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art.
This event took place at the Brooklyn Museum Saturday, May 10, 2014
