Momme

My photographs are a collaborative process between my mother and myself. Mom is co-author, artist, and subject. I am also the subject and content of the work … I view Mom and myself as one entity. —LaToya Ruby Frazier

LaToya Ruby Frazier uses photography to underscore the relationship between personal identity and the environment that shapes it. Frazier was born in a once-thriving steel mill town that, by the 1970s, had fallen into social and economic decline. About this portrait, Frazier has noted: “There is an intergenerational transference of our identities in the history of Braddock, Pennsylvania … The fact that I believe in confronting problems instead of running or hiding from them is why I choose to photograph what is dearest and closest to me.”