Support Independent Arts Journalism As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism and keep our reporting and criticism free and accessible to all. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today. Two hands, finely wrinkled and thick at the knuckles, rest one atop the other, gathered together in quiet elegance.
They express a keen sensitivity to style: five fingers are ornamented with rings. One of these, worn on the right index finger, is a gold General Motors retirement ring. As I look at LaToya Ruby Frazier’s carefully arranged photograph of these hands, and become fixated on this singular element, this portrait of adornment and self-fashioning expands into a record of the industry that these hands sustained.
The ring is indeed imbued with beauty and honor, but it also directs my attention subtly toward fraught questions about the labor it commemorates, and to the sinister reality of the industrial factory. The image conveys the beauty and dignity of these hands, as well as the things they labored over; it pays homage to their work while refusing to reduce them to it. These hands belong to Marilyn Moore, a UAW 1112 member who worked at General Motors for 32 years.
Frazier met Moore while working on The Last Cruze , the artist’s 2019 photo series made in collaboration with members of UAW Local 1112 and 1714 based in Lordstown, Ohio, as they fought against the closure of their GM assembly plant.
