Whitney Museum artist profile
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.
Courtesy of: Whitney Museum of Art, 2012 Biennial
