Kirsten O’Regan: These Dark Histories
LaToya Ruby Frazier (American, b. 1982). Self Portrait (March 10 am), 2009. Brooklyn Museum, Emily Winthrop Miles Fund, 2011.63.4. ©LaToya Ruby Frazier. Photo by LaToya Ruby Frazier.
Kirsten O’Regan: These Dark Histories
Guernica, a magazine of art & politics
April 17, 2013
LaToya Ruby Frazier does not particularly love journalists, despite the fact that her photographs perform an almost journalistic function. Over the past decade, Frazier has recorded the parallel decline of her family’s health and the unraveling social fabric of her de-industrialized hometown—enshrining the lives of those denied easy access to education, clean air, and healthcare in pristine silver gelatin prints. But telling one’s own story is very different from having it told by others, and Frazier, more than most, has a heightened sense of the importance of context.
