LaToya Ruby Frazier

Frazier was a teenager when she started photographing her family in her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a once-thriving steel town that has been crippled by poverty, drug use, and industrial pollution in recent decades. An artist and activist, Frazier indefatigably calls attention to the lives of the underrepresented while also highlighting the devastating effects of American manufacturing industries in decline.

In her acclaimed photographic series The Notion of Family (2001–14), Frazier has followed in the rich tradition of American social documentary photographers who have incorporated biographical details into their work, in effect making the personal political. She has often turned the camera on herself and her family, weaving her own personal narratives into the larger history of Braddock. Fifth Street Tavern and U.P.M.C Braddock Hospital on Braddock Avenue depicts the remnants of the town’s only hospital. Its controversial demolition left residents, including the artist and her family, without a local health clinic. In contrast to Frazier’s gripping portraits, this work presents a sweep of dilapidated town blocks almost entirely devoid of human presence. At the center of the composition, a barely visible solitary figure sits in a bulldozer amid the rubble. What was once a beacon for health and healing has been reduced to a no-man’s-land, imbued with an eerie stillness.