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Accession #	2011.63.2
Artist	LaToya Ruby Frazier
Title	Momme (Shadow), from Momme Portrait series
Date	2008
Medium	Gelatin silver print
Dimensions	sheet: 15 1/2 x 19 1/2 in. (39.4 x 49.5 cm) frame: 24 5/8 x 28 5/8 x 1 1/2 in. (62.5 x 72.7 x 3.8 cm) mount: 24 x 28 in. (61 x 71.1 cm)
Credit Line	Emily Winthrop Miles Fund
Location	American Identities: Everyday Life / A Nation Divided

Curatorial Remarks: In these photographs, LaToya Ruby Frazier’s intimate depictions of herself and her family simultaneously record the economic decline and social inequities that plague her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, the site of industrialist Andrew Carnegie’s first steel mill. Referencing early-twentieth-century documentary photographers, who worked in black and white, the artist locates herself through familial connections in portraits with her mother and grandmother, the worn image of the smiling Huxtable family on her T-shirt, or the space of one’s childhood home. At the same time, Frazier’s images mark the passage of time by her and her family’s experiences with illness, a reality reminiscent of the heightened health risks faced by many people working and living in the Rust Belt.