Books by LaToya Ruby Frazier

The Notion of Family

by LaToya Ruby Frazier

Now available in a paperback edition, LaToya Ruby Frazier's award-winning first book, The Notion of Family, 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.
The work also considers the impact of that decline on the community and on her family, creating a statement both personal and truly political--an intervention in the histories and narratives of the region. Frazier has compellingly set her story of three generations--her Grandma Ruby, her mother, and herself--against larger questions of civic belonging and responsibility. The work documents her own struggles and interactions with family and the expectations of community, and includes the documentation of the demise of Braddock's only hospital, reinforcing the idea that the history of a place is frequently written on the body as well as the landscape. With The Notion of Family, Frazier knowingly acknowledges and expands upon the traditions of classic black-and-white documentary photography, enlisting the participation of her family, and her mother in particular. In the creation of these collaborative works, Frazier reinforces the idea of art and image-making as a transformative act, a means of resetting traditional power dynamics and narratives--both those of her family and of the community at large.

LaToya Ruby Frazier Monuments of Solidarity

by Roxana Marcoci, LaToya Ruby Frazier

Frazier's personalized arrangements of her compelling photographs recognize the myriad social and political struggles of Black working-class communities

For more than two decades, artist-activist LaToya Ruby Frazier has used photography, text, moving images and performance to revive and preserve forgotten narratives of labor, gender and race in the postindustrial era. Frazier has cultivated a practice that builds on the legacy of the social documentary tradition of the 1930s, the photo-conceptual forays of the 1960s and 1970s, and the work of socially conscious writers such as Upton Sinclair, James Baldwin and bell hooks. Monuments of Solidarity celebrates the creativity and collaboration that persist in the face of industrialization and deindustrialization, racial and environmental injustice, gender disparities, unequal access to health care and clean water, and the denial of fundamental human rights. A form of Black feminist world-building, Frazier's nontraditional "monuments for workers' thoughts" demand recognition of the crucial role that women and people of color have played, and continue to play, in histories of labor and the working class.
Published in conjunction with the first comprehensive museum survey dedicated to the artist, Monuments of Solidarity presents the full range of her practice and includes both rarely seen and brand-new bodies of work. An illuminating overview essay by the exhibition's curator, Roxana Marcoci, is accompanied by a manifesto by the artist and a suite of focused essays by other curators and scholars.
LaToya Ruby Frazier was born in 1982 in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Her artistic practice spans a range of mediums, including photography, video, performance, installation art and books, and centers on the nexus of social justice, cultural change and commentary on the American experience. Frazier is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2015 MacArthur Fellowship.