Edgar Thomson Plant and the Bottom
LaToya Ruby Frazier
American, born 1982
2013
This large inkjet print photograph documents the Edgar Thomson steel plant and the adjacent "bottom" neighborhood in Braddock, Pennsylvania, using an aerial vantage to reveal how industrial infrastructure shapes and intrudes upon everyday life in the artist’s hometown.
Visually it reads like a flattened map—the hulking, rusting-blue mill, looping rail lines and neat pale stacks of wrapped material set against small brick houses—so that color, texture, and scale make the human presence feel both intimate and overwhelmed.
Frazier’s work blends documentary, family portraiture, and environmental critique to make visible the human and ecological costs of deindustrialization and environmental injustice in postindustrial America.
Medium
Inkjet print
Dimensions
42 × 63 1/2" (106.7 × 161.3 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Agnes Gund
Accession
199.2017
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
