Flint is Family Series

LaToya Ruby Frazier, American, born 1982

Flint is Family, 2016

The Flint water crisis is another example of the violence people of color and people of poverty experience worldwide. Astoundingly this violence is seen all over America. A country of wealth and power and an extensive government with agencies to protect the people against problems like these. However, the people of Flint, Michigan, were exempt from the protection of the government. The greedy officials neglected children, such as the one in this photograph, from their right to drink water, bathe, and brush their teeth. They were plagued by a toxic water supply sparked from a switch the state used to save money. The residents of all ages quickly fell ill to the toxicity. The background of the photograph shows a protestor holding up a “Flint Lives Matter” sign. This symbol further connects the water tragedy in Flint to the Black Lives Matter movement across the US today. The slow violence and systematic racism in our country prove the ideals that America boasts are only there to protect a select group, which is wealthy white Americans. Label by Annabel Bentley

The photograph from the series Flint is Family (2016) by LaToya Ruby Frazier effectively puts a face on how environmental factors like lead affect individuals. It presents an innocent young boy alongside a man in a hazmat suit, both seeking protection from danger, but with vastly different levels of exposure. This striking juxtaposition helps the audience comprehend the magnitude of the issue and those most affected by it. Such a form of protest proves highly effective in raising awareness and visibility for those who have been marginalized for generations. Label by Jackson Smith

Flint is Family Series

LaToya Ruby Frazier, American, born 1982

Flint is Family, 2016

LaToya Ruby Frasier is a multi-media artists who’s bodies of work center on social justice and the American experience to address urgent issues of politics and cultural change. Her collection Flint is Family, follows Shea Cobb and her family through her life in Flint, and provides and intimate look into the lives of those still affected by Flint’s contaminated water. Frasier directly connects and interacts with her subject and those experiencing environmental injustice, making her work particularly impactful as she takes the time to not only represent Flint, but amplify the voices its residents- an essential element of art and environmental justice. Not only does Frasier capture Cobb and those demanding justice, but she moves a step further to make actual change in conjunction with her work, bringing an atmospheric water generator to deliver clean water to the people she photographed, establishing an important connection to the place she used in her art. Label by Molly McCarthy Flood

Flint is Family Series

LaToya Ruby Frazier, American, born 1982

Flint is Family, 2016

This image depicts the young child of Shea Cobb, a lifelong resident of Flint, Michigan. After the citizens in Flint became aware of the contamination of the water supply, many families were forced to avoid their taps entirely in order to avoid the poison that was contained in the water. In this image, the young girl is using bottled water to brush her teeth instead of the tap water. Due to the contamination, clean water turned from a standard utility to a vital resource that needed to be rationed. The sparkle that appears in her eyes highlights the natural relationship all living beings have with water as our sustenance. Her overall demeanor seems excited, and more than anything, natural. There is a certain sinister nature to this image in that we know as humans that our interaction with water is not something we would like to contemplate and is often something those who have access to clean water take for granted. However, we also know that this child is being required to develop an untrusting relationship with the water that flows from her tap and fills the local rivers. Water in Flint is now a commodity that needs to be shipped in in bottles, and rationed strategically to brush teeth in what is said to be one of the most advanced countries in the world. Label by Gwyneth McCrae