A creative solution for the water crisis in Flint, Michigan
LaToya spent five months living in Flint, Michigan, documenting the lives of those affected by the city's water crisis for her photo essay Flint is Family. As the crisis dragged on, she realized it was going to take more than a series of photos to bring relief. In this inspiring, surprising TED talk, she shares the creative lengths she went to in order to bring free, clean water to the people of Flint.
Read more • Watch LaToya's talk on TED.com
What a Picture From the Sky Reveals About Oppression
Special Issue from The Atlantic
Fifty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., The Atlantic commemorates his life and work—and reflects on the reality of today’s America through the prism of his vision.
The Atlantic’s new special issue takes the reader from King’s development as a young activist to the building of his campaign against what he called the “three major evils” of society: racism, poverty, and militarism.
The Geography of Oppression
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, but his death reverberated across the United States. To this day, the 1968 Holy Week Uprising influences the human geography of some cities, shaping how poverty and dysfunction concentrate in black neighborhoods.
Memphis did not feel the full flames of riots in April 1968, in part because of King’s nonviolent organizing apparatus. But his spirit was not enough to hold back the tide of despair and violence that brought millions of dollars of damage to other major metropolises, including Baltimore and Chicago. Still, King’s assassination has influenced how these cities are physically structured, from the gutting of urban neighborhoods to the memorializing of the civil rights leader in monuments, streets, and schools.
Using a helicopter and aerial photography techniques available in 1968, LaToya Ruby Frazier revisited Memphis, Baltimore, and Chicago to explore how they have responded to five more decades of oppression.
Contributors include:
Dr. King’s youngest child, Bernice King, who wrote the issue’s introduction
Jesse Williams and John Legend on the intersection between art and activism
MacArthur fellows Matt Desmond, Jesmyn Ward, and LaToya Ruby Frazier
Representative John Lewis, who marched with King in Selma
Historian Jeanne Theoharis on Coretta Scott King and the hidden women of the movement
Voices from The Atlantic’s archives, including Stokely Carmichael, Jonathan Kozol, and Archibald MacLeish
Available for purchase from The Atlantic
And From The Coaltips A Tree Will Rise
New catalogue of work by LaToya Ruby Frazier.
A 2016 residency at MAC’s Grand-Hornu (Museum of Contemporary Arts) allowed LaToya to pursue work on a post-industrial society in Belgium. Her focus was the Borinage, a mining region whose intense activity in the 19th century was diminished by a series of crises that led to the closure of the last mine in 1976. Testimonies gathered by Frazier from the former miners and their families have resulted in And From The Coaltips A Tree Will Rise, an extensive collection of portraits, landscapes and still lifes.
Available for purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Artbook | D.A.P.
Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: MAC’S Grand Hornu (Museum of Contemporary Arts, Belgium)
Date: September 26, 2017
Language: English
ISBN-10: 2930368705
ISBN-13: 978-2930368702
Aperture releases “The Notion Of Family” in paperback
The Notion Of Family
Photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier
Interview by Dawoud Bey Essays by Laura Wexler and Dennis C. Dickerson
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.
See more on Aperture.org