Care and Crisis in LaToya Ruby Frazier’s Photography

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s photobook The Notion of Family (2001–2014) documents scenes of caregiving—cooking, cleaning, assisting the sick, and organizing aid—in Braddock, Pennsylvania, an aging steeltown shaped by environmental racism and organized abandonment. While often framed within portraiture or documentary traditions, this essay foregrounds Frazier’s critical dialogue with feminist theory and eco-Marxism to expose the contradictions in the planetary crisis of reproduction. Drawing on such thinkers as Gabriel Winant, Joan Tronto, and Nancy Fraser, I argue that Frazier highlights the ongoing invisibility of Black women’s care work, the forms of exploitation and oppression that structure the US health system, and the threats posed by industrial manufacturing to fragile ecosocial systems. Through close readings of portraits of caregiving, still lifes of consumption, and staged performances, I claim that TNOF reimagines the Black working-class home as a space for fostering critical practices of care beyond market-driven and heteropatriarchal frameworks.