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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava.

LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity, Published by the Museum of Modern Art

When I met her at the Museum of Modern Art on May 10th, at the Preview of her stunning early mid-career Retrospective, I told Ms. Frazier her book, LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity, was my NoteWorthy PhotoBook of the Year. Even though we’re barely half way through 2024 as I write this and there are still six full months to go. With all due respect to all the books not yet released as well as those I have not yet seen, Ms. Frazier  gets my 2024 Trophy as most recommended PhotoBook for her powerful & urgently important book, published to accompany and expand on the show of the same name. Frankly, she deserves a medal for the work she has done.

Ruby LaToya Frazier proudly showing me her new book, Monuments of Soilidarity at MoMA, May 10, 2024

Having begun taking Photographs at 16, she seemed to find her voice almost immediately. “I had decided when I was a teenager that I had to make work that was socially and politically conscious¹,” she said.

Auspicious beginnings. The Notion of Family, 2016.

Her early work focused on 3 generations of her family and life in her hometown of Braddock, PA in her debut PhotoBook, The Notion of Family, in 2016. She subsequently turned her attention to the coalminers in the Borinage, Belgium, in And From the Coaltips a Tree Will Rise, in 2017. Returning the U.S., she documented the closing of the G.M. plant in Lordstown, Ohio in The Last Cruze, 2019, and the man-made water crisis in Flint, Michigan in Flint Is Family In Three Acts, 2022 in book form. All four book are NoteWorthy in their own right.

MoMA, May 12, 2024

Monuments of Solidarity is an overview of LaToya Ruby Frazier’s work to date in what is a Show of the Year. I looked at her most recent NYC gallery show, More Than Conquerors: A Monument for Community Health Workers of Baltimore, Maryland, 2021-22, here, which is included in the book and the show. The piece, which consists of 18 Inkjet panels on IV stands, was recently astutely acquired by the forward-looking Baltimore Museum.

Partial installation view, More Than Conquerors: A Monument for Community Health Workers of Baltimore, Maryland, 2021-22, as installed at MoMA May 12, 2024. Each piece is in 2 parts. On the right-hand panel is a text written by the subject of her Photo on the left panel. You can see it installed at Gladstone Gallery in my look at it here.

There are a lot of great Artists in this country. You have your list. I have mine. There are also a lot of important Artists working here today. One thing that sets LaToya Ruby Frazier apart, in my view, is that, in addition to her poignant Photography, she brings her subjects right into her work. Though hers is the overall vision, the results feel collaborative. This serves to make the results unlike most of what’s come before.

Installation view. Flint Is Family section. May 12, 2024 including more compelling texts from her subjects accompanying her Photos.

After posing for this picture with her book, she asked me what I thought of her show. I told her I was very moved by the Photos she took with and about her Grandmother, now well-known images from her instant classic The Notion of Family. In them we see the Artist’s vision and talent were stunningly present from an early age, as if she was born with a camera in her hand, while we also get insights into her and her family’s life in her hometown. Braddock, PA, which in turn fueled her passion to inspire change and to right wrongs.

UPMC Braddock Hospital and Holland Avenue Parking Lot, 2011. The community hospital in ruins, where her grandmother had passed.

After we see the passing of her Grandmother, the show took an immediate turn and from then on was focused on depicting crises effecting “everyday” citizens, working class people, and issues of race. 

MoMA, May 10, 2024

Monuments of Solidarity is not only a “PhotoBook.” It delves deeply into its subjects in a way I find every bit as powerful as her Photographs are. This is evidence of LaToya’s extraordinary way with people. Watching her at MoMA, she took the time to have an actual moment with everyone she encountered. Even me (we’d never met).

LaToya Ruby Frazier Takes on Levis, 2011, Stills from the Video which premiered on Art21. LaToya took issue with Levi’s after they featured her hometown, Braddock, PA, in an “Everybody’s Work Is Equally Important” ad campaign. As part of the campaign, Levi’s  opened a public Photo Workshop in SoHo. In response, LaToya put on a pair of Levi’s and in a performance in front of the Levi’s Photo Workshop, preceded to destroy them while wearing them. The intense Video is looped in the show.

LaToya Ruby Frazier, the person, makes every bit as good, and memorable, an impression as her work does, though the intensity we see in pieces like her incredible Levi’s Performance Video remained under the surface.

MoMA, May 10, 2024

I think her people skills, which isn’t the right term for someone who is as genuine as Mr. Frazier is…make that her humanity, is a central reason why her Art is so powerful and so direct, project after project. LaToya gets to the heart of the issue and speaks to why it is important- for those directly involved, and for all of us, like very few Artists working today can.

Partial installation view. The Last Cruze, 2019 (recently acquired by MoMA), looks at the last Chevy Cruze to be made in Lordstown, Ohio after G.M. halted production and closed the plant, throwing all the workers out of their jobs.

Ms. Frazier’s work is compared by some to that of the F.S.A. (Farm Services Administration) Photographers of the 1930s, including Dorothea Lange. One thing of many that sets her work apart is that she foregrounds the experiences of her subjects right alongside her Photographs in texts they authored; something the FSA Artists didn’t do.

On this spread from The Last Cruze PhotoBook the subjects of Photos accompany them in pieces they wrote.

She gives many, maybe event most, of the actual people she depicts in her projects, their own voice. Quite often their words take up more space in her books and in this exhibition than her Photos do! I can’t say I’ve ever seen that before. In the literal sense, her work truly is a collection of  “moments of solidarity” between Artist and subject.

Woman of Steel Button Pin, 2017

“Woman of Steel” reads the button on the cover. Though she’s not a steelworker, she could easily wear one and it would completely suit her in the literal sense.

*-Soundtrack for this piece is “Poverty” by Yemi Alade, from her album, Woman of Steel, fittingly, performed here live-

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