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Here are 5 things I was looking at and loving this week:
I loved learning about the Handsworth Self-portrait Project (see grid above!) and seeing it given new life 40 years later on Instagram. “There was lots of discussion in the 1970s about documentary photography and how it represented people. We wanted to get people to take their own portraits, to give them the opportunity to represent themselves to the camera. That was very important – that we allow people to put themselves in the frame.”
It’s easy to see why she’s being called one of America’s foremost social documentary photographers. LaToya Ruby Frazier’s work charts the experience of working-class people around the country as they face compounding challenges of deindustrialization, environmental degradation and inequality. Through it all, her hometown Braddock remains her best template for understanding the world.
Making Hitchcockian Portraits (I love this one in color!)
Two of the best reasons to be on IG still: @milesmusickid and @cookingforlevi.
Stock up, friends. Here’s a PSA: Another Sriracha Shortage seems imminent.
LaToya Ruby Frazier's work is just so deep and engaging. I hope we get a show in the UK some day. The Handsworth Self-Portrait project is a lovely example of a number of socially engaged and collaborative projects that were going on in the UK at that time. Have you seen Daniel Meadows' work? He drove round the UK from the early '70s onwards in a converted double decker bus doing something similar but around the country, not one neighbourhood. It was called The Free Photographic Omnibus: https://www.danielmeadows.co.uk/gallery/photographs/portraits-from-the-free-photographic-omnibus-1973-1974
Another very, very engaging post. I had just heard about LaToya Ruby Frazier's new MOMA show, Monuments of Solidarity, just a day or so ago. Your post brought me much deeper into her impressive work and career. Thank you! (And thanks for the other interesting links. I looked through everything this week!)