LaToya Ruby Frazier

(Braddock, Pennsylvania, 1982 - )

North America, American

LaToya Ruby Frazier grew up in the deindustrialized steel town of Braddock, Pennsylvania. A Pittsburgh suburb, Braddock is home to Andrew Carnegie’s Edgar Thomson Steel Works, which has been active since 1872. Frazier is best known for The Notion of Family, her series documenting the changes her family has witnessed in Braddock through collaboratively staged and photographed portraits of herself, her mother and her grandmother. Frazier’s work in photography, video and performance addresses environmental justice, healthcare inequity, rustbelt revitalization, collective history and family. Frazier earned a BFA from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2004, an MFA from Syracuse University in 2007, and participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program from 2010 to 2011. She has held the position of assistant professor of photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2014. Frazier has received many awards, including a 2015 MacArthur Foundation fellowship, a 2014 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, the 2013 Gwendolyn Knight & Jacob Lawrence Prize of the Seattle Art Museum and the 2011 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. Her work can be found in public and private collections internationally, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Seattle Art Museum.

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