Self Portrait In Gramps' Bedroom (227 Holland Avenue)

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s photographs build on a long history of social documentation in art. Frazier has witnessed and experienced the devastating impact of deindustrialization on her once flourishing hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, the site of Andrew Carnegie’s first steel mill. Today home to fewer than 2,500 people, this area suffers not only from environmental neglect, but also serious economic and social problems due in part to the decline of the steel industry. Frazier has been exploring these issues while photographing her hometown since she was 16, documenting the public spaces of Braddock and the private lives of her family.

In "Self Portrait in Gramps’ Bedroom (227 Holland Avenue)," Frazier stands alone in a crumbling, barren bedroom wearing her deceased step-grandfather’s pajamas. Barefoot with her head tilted down, Frazier looks up at the viewer, vulnerable but tense, as if prepared to react to any small movement. In a highly personal moment within a private space, wearing her grandfather’s pajamas, she is momentarily reconnected to her lost relative. Frazier’s stirring self-portrait seems to speak to the state of the city itself—hurting, but not yet beaten.