Huxtables, Mom, and Me, from the series The Notion of Family, 2008
Gelatin silver print
16 × 20 inch print | 24 × 28 inch mount
Framed size: 27 × 31 in.
Edition 4 of 8
April 22, 2024
This self-portrait by LaToya Ruby Frazier reveals layers of meaning upon closer examination. As in other works from her series The Notion of Family, the photograph was taken in her childhood home in Braddock, Pennsylvania, and includes the multiple generations of family living there. We first see LaToya engaging the viewer through the camera’s lens, and then our eye travels to the mirror to her right, where she is echoed by her mother, who is standing across the room looking at her, dressed in military fatigues.
Frazier conceived of this series as a collaboration between her, her mother, and her Grandma Ruby, and she credits her mother with the suggestion to include the vintage t-shirt featuring the Huxtables, the family depicted in The Cosby Show. Frazier recalls watching the show as a child, seeing a family centered around two successful Black professionals as an aspirational escape from the fragmentation of her own working-class upbringing. Frazier’s work engages her family as a way to examine larger issues of class and race. In so doing she reminds us that the issues of social and economic justice are always rooted in the intimate specificity of people’s lives.
The Museum of Modern Art will be hosting the survey exhibition "LaToya Ruby Frazier: Monuments of Solidarity," from May 12 through September 7, 2024.
