What does the American myth of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, of hard work pays off, of social mobility, and of the land of equal opportunity — add up to? That was a question photographer Matt Black had no choice but to confront in his hometown in California’s central valley where one-third of the population lives in poverty. From 2014 to 2020 — a period of ideological and social reckoning in America — Black traveled over 100,000 miles across 46 states and found that he could traverse coast to coast without ever crossing above the poverty line. American Geography is an exploration, both critical and hopeful, of life in America and the dream it has long promised.
American Geography (Thames & Hudson, 2021)
When Magnum photographer Matt Black began exploring his hometown in California’s rural Central Valley—dubbed “the other California,” where one-third of the population lives in poverty—he knew what his next project had to be. Black was inspired to create a vivid portrait of an unknown America, to photograph some of the poorest communities across the US. Traveling across forty-six states and Puerto Rico, Black visited designated “poverty areas,” places with a poverty rate above 20 percent, and found that poverty areas are so numerous that they’re never more than a two-hour’s drive apart, woven through the fabric of the country but cut off from “the land of opportunity.” American Geography is a visual record of this five-year, 100,000-mile road trip, which chronicles the vulnerable conditions faced by America’s poor.
This compelling compilation of black-and-white photographs is accompanied by Black’s own travelogue—a collection of observations, overheard conversations in cafe´s and public transportation, diner menus, bus timetables, historical facts, and snippets from daily news reports. A future classic of photography, this monograph is supported by an international touring exhibition and is a must-have for anyone with an interest in witnessing the reality of an America that’s been excluded from the American Dream.
American Artifacts (Thames & Hudson, 2024)
During his six-year journey across the United States creating the project that became American Geography, Matt Black collected objects in the locations he visited. Each location is designated as an area of “concentrated poverty”—a US Census definition for places with poverty rates of 20% or higher. Over time, the objects he found and collected began to take on symbolic significance.
As Black crisscrossed the United States, his collection grew into the thousands: plastic spoons and forks, lottery tickets, liquor bottles, lighters, and matchbooks. Some items were important, like job applications, medical paperwork, driver’s licenses; some were lost personal effects, like family photographs, bracelets, eyeglasses, notes, and letters. And there was the detritus of labor: work gloves, broken tools and supplies, wire, bolts, padlocks, and bent nails.
This new monograph, presented as a companion volume to Black’s seminal photobook, American Geography, presents photographs of these objects, assemblages, and collages, as well as previously unpublished images from American Geography, and the voices of those who are cut off from the “American Dream.”
These humble, discarded objects form a portrait of America assembled from its roadways and sidewalks, an archaeology of dispossession. For those who follow Black’s photographic work and his unflinching critique of inequality in the United States, this book is an essential volume.
