Grandma Ruby on Her Recliner

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LaToya Ruby Frazier photographs the evolution of her home town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, the site of the last remaining active steel mill in the Pittsburgh area, through collaboratively executed portraits of her family. Frazier uses these images to document the social and economic shifts following the city’s industrial decline and the damage the local steel plant has inflicted on her health and that of her relatives. “The history of a town like Braddock is inscribed in our bodies, the way that our flesh is changing and shifting as we’re within the environment,” Frazier notes. Keenly aware of the ways in which documentary photography has historically neglected the viewpoints and voices of its often disenfranchised subjects, Frazier creates her images in a way that gives creative agency to the individuals depicted by inviting their active participation.