Kelly Crump profiled for Evening Standard
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United States LaToya Ruby Frazier is an American artist recognized for her photographic work, video art, and performance art, focusing on social inequality and historical change.
In a performance developed in collaboration with the artist Liz Magic Laser, Frazier carries out a choreographed series of movements on the sidewalk in front of the Levi's store.
Her photographs, videos and interviews, with a matching grant from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, enabled Frazier, and her team, to bring an atmospheric water generator to Flint, Michigan.
LaToya Ruby Frazier, born in Braddock, Pennsylvania, in 1982, is an American artist whose work spans photography, video art, and performance art. She began photographing her family and hometown at the age of 16, drawing inspiration from social documentary traditions and artists like Gordon Parks. Frazier’s artistic approach was deeply influenced by her experiences growing up in Braddock, a post-industrial town that faced economic decline and environmental issues after the steel industry collapsed. Her work often addresses the impact of systemic problems such as deindustrialization, racism, and environmental degradation on individuals and communities.
Frazier pursued formal education in photography, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2004 and a Master of Fine Arts from Syracuse University in 2007. She further honed her artistic practice through the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2010–2011. Her career includes teaching at Yale University and participation in numerous prestigious exhibitions globally. Frazier’s notable work, “The Notion of Family,” is a collaborative photo-documentary project with her mother and grandmother, depicting their lives in Braddock and challenging media stereotypes. This body of work, spanning from 2001 to 2014, powerfully integrates self-portraiture with social narrative to explore themes of family, place, and the human cost of industrial decline.
Her career has been marked by significant recognition, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015. Frazier has also extended her documentary work to contemporary issues such as the Flint water crisis, through projects like “Flint is Family.” In this series, she collaborated with residents to present a human-centered narrative of the crisis, emphasizing empathy and the resilience of affected communities. Her methodology involves immersing herself in the communities she documents, working closely with subjects to ensure their stories are told authentically and with agency. Frazier views her camera as a tool for social justice, aiming to elevate the voices and experiences of those often overlooked in historical and media narratives.
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