LaToya Ruby Frazier was recently honored with the Infinity Award for Publication by the International Center of Photography for her first book, The Notion of Family (Aperture 2015). Tonight, an exhibition of selected works goes on view at the Aperture gallery.

In the book, Frazier tells the story of the decline of her hometown, Braddock, Pennsylvania, through photographs of three generations: her mother, her grandmother and herself. A society in transition, as seen through the struggles of three women who live below the poverty line but nevertheless experience a rich family life, becomes a backstory that looms large.

The photograph above, Grandma Ruby and Me, from 2005, demonstrates not only the closeness of her family ties, but also the core of her working process, which is part performance and part documentation. She has involved her mother and grandmother in the conception and execution of these images, and in this instance, her grandmother braided Frasier’s hair as it was done when she was a child. During those years, her Grandma Ruby dressed her up like a doll and surrounding her with them. The poverty of the declining neighborhood was kept at bay inside her grandma’s comfortable home.

In an interview for NPR that aired yesterday, Frasier said, "Another way to understand it is to see my grandmother as Braddock's prosperous days, my mother as the signification of white flight and segregation, and me as the 1980s and '90s during the war on drugs and the dismantling of the surrounding steel plants."

The opening reception for LaToya Ruby Frazier | Selected Works, is tonight from 6 to 8 pm at Aperture Gallery, 547 West 27^th Street, 4^th Floor, NY, NY. See a video of Frasier in Braddock, here.

LaToya Ruby Frazier (born in Braddock, Pennsylvania, 1982) received her BFA in photography and graphic design in 2004 at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, and her MFA in 2007 from the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, New York. In 2011, Frazier completed the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program and shortly thereafter was appointed Critic in Photography at the Yale University School of Art. Currently she is an Assistant Professor in Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her first New York solo exhibition, A Haunted Capital, was held at the Brooklyn Museum in 2013. Frazier has received numerous grants and awards, including a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2015 TED Fellowship.

CORRECTION: Angelika Schori | Light Touch, opens tonight, from 6-8 pm, at  Pablo’s Birthday, 57 Orchard Street, NY, NY, not yesterday, as listed in this week's DART Board.