Danny Wilcox Frazier

Location: Iowa City, Iowa

Throughout his career, Danny Wilcox Frazier has concentrated on covering issues of marginalized communities both in and outside the Unites States. Over the past six years, Frazier has photographed people struggling to survive the economic shift that devastated rural communities across his home state of Iowa. This project was awarded the 2006 Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize in Photography and was published by CDS and Duke University Press in November of 2007. Robert Frank selected Frazier’s work for the prize. After completing the book, Frazier directed a documentary that confronts issues highlighted by his photographs, premièring the film in New York in May 2009.

Freelance work includes: TIME, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, Life, People, Fortune, Forbes, BusinessWeek, The Washington Post Magazine, and Der Spiegel. Frazier is a contributing photographer for Mother Jones and CR magazines. He has collaborated with CR magazine’s creative director, Yolanda Cuomo, on numerous projects. Frazier has received prizes from Pictures of The Year International, the National Press Photographers Association, Society of Professional Journalists, and Chinese International Press Photo as well as numerous grants and fellowships for foreign and domestic projects.

Frazier’s foreign assignments have taken him to Afghanistan, India, Cuba, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Kosovo, and Mexico. In 2004, Frazier received a master’s degree from the University of Iowa, where he taught photojournalism during his graduate studies.

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Danny Wilcox Frazier: Slideshow | Grid View
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  • Marshall Missouri
  • East Village
  • Republican National Convention
  • GM and Janesville
  • GM and Janesville
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  • Romney in Michigan
  • Montgomery County, PA
  • Borderland
  • Borderland
  • Burning Man
  • Burning Man
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  • The Badlands of South Dakota are surrounded by one of the most economically depressed regions in the United States. While the recession in America and global financial crisis have emptied retirement accounts and caused mass unemployment, it is the most impoverished regions that are most vulnerable. Dr. Karl Stauber, the former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Research, Education and Economics has written, “For some parts of rural America, the slow slide to no longer being viable – economically, socially, or politically – is within sight. The rural ghetto, if it is allowed to continue and expand, will be a powerful symbol of failure in America and of American culture. It will mean that America accepts the idea that success and prosperity should be allocated based on race and location, rather than being available to all.”
  • The sun breaks through clouds near Wanblee, South Dakota. Wanblee is part of the Pine Ridge reservation, one of the poorest regions in North America, and home to the Oglala Lakota tribe.
  • Iraq war veteran Brian Findel on the road near Interior, South Dakota.
  • Julie Long shovels dried horse and cow manure in one of the dilapidated barns on her boyfriend’s self-described “dirt poor” horse and cattle ranch in southwest South Dakota. Long and John Neumann had their desire to continue ranching tested the prior winter when they went without running water in their trailer for two months after the pipes froze.
  • Clarence Broken Rope smokes a cigarette at his uncle’s home in Allen, South Dakota. Broken Rope is one of many young people on the Pine Ridge reservation that is unemployed, while the reservation has a poverty rate of over 50 percent.
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  • The Badlands of South Dakota has always been a difficult place. The region surrounding the Badlands, which includes the Pine Ridge reservation, has been one of the poorest and most socially troubled regions in the nation’s history.
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  • John Neumann spends the afternoon working on his pickup truck. Neumann, a horse and cattle rancher, barely survived eight-straight years of draught in southwest South Dakota, only to be challenged by high fuel costs once the rainfall improved in 2008.
  • Wikuchela Waters sleeps on his parent’s bed in Allen, South Dakota. Water’s family lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where 61 percent of children live in poverty, the fourth highest rate in the nation.
  • Julie Long pets her blind donkey while watering animals on her boyfriends ranch. Long has taken in many sick horses and donkeys, nursing them back to health and selling some for a profit.
  • John Neumann carries a dead, decaying cat out of his horse barn on his ranch in southwest South Dakota.
  • Children play at sunset in Allen, South Dakota. Allen is the poorest city in America with a per capita income of $1539.00, while the Pine Ridge reservation, which Allen is a part of, has a child poverty rate of 61 percent.
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