CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/12/2024

Black Feminist World-Building in LaToya Ruby Frazier’s ‘Monuments of Solidarity’

“I am not a carbon copy of anyone, just as you are not a composite of your mother, father, grandparents, siblings or extended relatives. The self-portrait you see—the image of your presence—will be the life you live. Part of the root of the world photograph is phōs, which means ‘light’ or ‘to shine.’ It appears also in the ancient Greek word phōsphóros, which means “bearer of light” or “bringer of light.” To photograph means to draw light. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” So begins Monuments of Solidarity, the catalog to LaToya Ruby Frazier’s formidable MoMA survey, collecting more than two decades of her rich, empathetic photographic projects dealing with equity in labor, gender relationships, race, environmental justice and health care, to name just a few of the major issues she tackles head on. “Momme” (2008) is from Frazier’s earliest, breakthrough body of work, The Notion of Family (2001–14)—centered around her collapsed steel-milling hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, and three generations of African American women including herself, her mother and her grandmother—which she initiated when she was just sixteen years old.