LaToya Ruby Frazier Puts a Face on the US Labour Crisis
Frieze Magazine
by Ian Bourland
The artist’s moving portraits of ‘unallocated’ auto workers in Lordstown, Ohio, on view at the Renaissance Society, celebrate the power of unions as job losses hit US manufacturing
During the late summer of 2019, some thirty General Motors plants were idled across the US during the strike of 49,000 members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union – the largest such stoppage in half a century. At stake were matters of equity for new workers, better wages and the security of health coverage. The American auto industry and its supply chains are crucial to the economies of the ‘rust belt’ states of the Midwest, and at the centre of debates around free trade, offshoring, and the future of labour in the country. In a bargain that ended the strike, UAW assented to the shuttering of three plants, including the hulking Lordstown Assembly in eastern Ohio. The latter has been in operation since the middle of last century and, until March 2019, produced the compact Chevrolet Cruze.
The photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier was on hand as the last Cruze was assembled and later transported to a dealership in nearby Boardman, Ohio. In 2018, the year the 3,000 members of the local UAW chapters 1112 and 1714 merged, Frazier began a larger project of collaboration and advocacy for the workers. She has dedicated her current exhibition of 67 photographs and one video work at the Renaissance Society and a portfolio for The New York Times to raising awareness about the imminent decimation of a community and telling the stories of a place that once exemplified the ‘American Dream’.
Courtesy of: Frieze Magazine
