LaToya Ruby Frazier chronicled Lordstown auto plant’s demise
The Columbus Dispatch
by Eric Lagatta
Photo by Fred Squillante, The Columbus Dispatch.
Visual artist LaToya Ruby Frazier spent nine months documenting the workers at the Chevrolet Cruze assembly line in Lordstown both before and after they rolled the final car off the assembly line. More than 60 of those images will be the subject of an exhibition opening Saturday at the Wexner Center for the Arts.
The news being reported on her television upset photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier.
The visual artist’s career was one dedicated to being a voice for working-class people across the Rust Belt, so the November 2018 reports that General Motors would close five North American plants in the coming year wasn’t something she took lightly.
The number of jobs affected was astonishing — 14,700 — but all Frazier could think about were the lives behind that figure. About 1,600 of them were at the Chevrolet Cruze assembly line in Lordstown, a small Ohio village located about 15 miles northwest of Youngstown.
“I was deeply concerned for the community, those workers, their families,” said Frazier, 38, a Chicago resident. “There is no way I’m going to idly sit back.”
After spending a month traveling to automobile trade shows around the Midwest to gather research about the Cruze, Frazier arrived in Lordstown on Feb. 9. The resulting 18-page photo spread in The New York Times Magazine wasn’t the end of her connection to the plant; Frazier kept returning to the community for months to photograph the workers both before and after they rolled the final Cruze off the assembly line.
More than 60 of those images will be the subject of an exhibition opening Saturday at the Wexner Center for the Arts. “LaToya Ruby Frazier: The Last Cruze” is a stark examination of the uncertainty that many workers faced when the plant closed — or was “unallocated,” in the parlance of GM officials — last March.
Courtesy of: The Columbus Dispatch
