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Grandma Ruby and Me

LaToya Ruby Frazier

Photography

In these photographs, LaToya Ruby Frazier’s intimate depictions of herself and her family simultaneously record the economic decline and social inequities that plague her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, the site of industrialist Andrew Carnegie’s first steel mill. Referencing early-twentieth-century documentary photographers, who worked in black and white, the artist locates herself through familial connections in portraits with her mother and grandmother, the worn image of the smiling Huxtable family on her T-shirt, or the space of one’s childhood home. At the same time, Frazier’s images mark the passage of time by her and her family’s experiences with illness, a reality reminiscent of the heightened health risks faced by many people working and living in the Rust Belt.
MEDIUM Gelatin silver print
DATES 2005
DIMENSIONS sheet: 15 1/2 x 18 1/2 in. (39.4 x 47 cm) frame: 24 5/8 x 28 5/8 x 1 1/2 in. (62.5 x 72.7 x 3.8 cm) mount: 24 x 28 in. (61 x 71.1 cm)  (show scale)
COLLECTIONS Photography
ACCESSION NUMBER 2011.63.1
CREDIT LINE Emily Winthrop Miles Fund
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION LaToya Ruby Frazier (American, born 1982). Grandma Ruby and Me, 2005. Gelatin silver print, sheet: 15 1/2 x 18 1/2 in. (39.4 x 47 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Emily Winthrop Miles Fund, 2011.63.1. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Image courtesy of the artist, CUR.2011.63.1_artist_photograph.jpg)
EDITION Edition: AP1
IMAGE overall, CUR.2011.63.1_artist_photograph.jpg. Image courtesy of the artist
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
RIGHTS STATEMENT ©LaToya Ruby Frazier
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