LaToya Ruby Frazier, one of the recipients of the 2015 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, will use her award to advance the conversation around labor and wellness in her Pennsylvania hometown and around the world.
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
For photographer and educator LaToya Ruby Frazier, one of 24 recipients of this year's prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, reflecting on the lives of her grandparents means confronting painful realities about their hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. Braddock was once a thriving steel town, located about 10 miles east of Pittsburgh.
Frazier's step-great-grandfather, whom she calls Gramps, worked in a steel mill owned by Andrew Carnegie in Braddock. He developed severe arthritis from the hard labor. She saw his physical decline.
"I grew up watching Gramps go from this beautiful, regal man in these amazing tailored suits to his body crumbling," she told BuzzFeed News. "His bones felt heavy like steel itself."
Gramps died on Thanksgiving in 2004. Five years later, her grandmother died of pancreatic cancer.
Frazier told BuzzFeed News that both family members helped raise her, and explained the impact that it had on her creative outlook.
"Growing up from a youth to a teen, death was a very common experience for me," said the 33-year-old. "But the impact of that influence made me become very sensitive to our health care inequities."
The year after her grandmother died, the Braddock community learned that the town hospital, owned by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, was closing its doors after more than 100 years.
"There was this whole community of elders who lost jobs when the steel factories closed, who contracted life-threatening diseases because of their work there, and then their hospital got taken away," Frazier told BuzzFeed News.
Those painful realities became the basis of her photographic work.
Image courtesy of LaToya Ruby Frazier
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1jQPR77
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