LaToya Ruby Frazier’s haunting and evocative photographs document the people, places, and politics that have shaped her life and her art. Frazier’s hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, located just outside of Pittsburgh, is both the source and subject of her best-known body of work, The Notion of Family; four works from this series are presented here. Within the domestic settings of living rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms, Frazier’s images of her mother Cynthia, her grandmother Ruby, and the young JC, as well as of herself, illuminate both the intimacy between them and their struggles with economic insecurity and chronic disease—struggles shared by the broader community of Braddock and beyond.

This presentation of photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier is the inaugural Spotlight exhibition, a new 21c initiative that focuses on a single artist making time-based work. Frazier’s work was selected for Spotlight because her photographs embody and express the theme of FotoFocus 2018, Open Archive. Documenting personal and public experience, Frazier’s practice expands the notion of an archive to include family narrative, social commentary, political critique, and aesthetic innovation.