Ruby Frazier died with many secrets, perhaps not telling Latoya much of her own past was a way to preserve her own dignity. The photographer Latoya Frazier was left with the elder Ruby Frazier at the age of 3 or 4 years old. Her mother was often between men, drug addiction, health emergencies or one drama after another. Like the African American artists creating new art forms, telling the truth and bending it, fashioning it mostly from confined social circumstances.