Matt Black – MacArthur Basis

About Matt’s Work

Matt Black is a photographer chronicling folks and landscapes in marginalized communities throughout the United States. In distinctive black and white photos, Black compels viewers to grapple with the prevalence of poverty within the United States and its impacts on each day life for a lot of Americans.

Much of Black’s work focuses on the agricultural agricultural communities close to his dwelling in California’s Central Valley. In sequence similar to The Dry Land (2014), Black reveals the impression of sustained drought on the area’s migrant farmworkers. For a subsequent physique of labor, Black traveled across the United States by automotive and bus from 2014 to 2020 to {photograph} cities and cities the place 20 p.c or extra of the inhabitants lives beneath the poverty line. Black visited areas in 46 states and Puerto Rico, from small rural cities in central California to bigger cities similar to El Paso, Texas, and Buffalo, New York. Images of empty streets, boarded-up buildings, and remnants of trade recur throughout lots of of areas. Black makes use of blown-out highlights and deep, darkish grays and blacks to create compositions which might be without delay hanging and spare. The photos visualize the circumstances of impoverishment confronted by so many communities within the United States. Black reveals that poverty just isn’t an aberration however moderately a defining function of the American panorama. In two brief movies and a ebook entitled American Geography (2021), Black contains area notes, journal entries, and audio recordings that convey the humanity of the people he encountered in his travels. A companion ebook, American Artifacts (2024), options photos of a number of the practically 3,000 objects Black collected from the cities he visited. Assemblages of plastic silverware, panhandling indicators, twisted wire coat hangers, lottery tickets, lighters, empty cigarette packages, and different detritus present the struggles and laborious realities of life within the locations he visited.

Currently, Black is engaged on a brand new challenge about mining throughout the Western United States. He can also be documenting the impacts of rising temperatures, decreased precipitation, and widespread wildfires throughout the area. His thermal photos in black and white seize burn scars within the Sierra Nevada mountain vary and warmth emanating from seared and barren landscapes. Black’s humanistic imaginative and prescient makes the realities of inequality seen and goals to mobilize society to face the difficulty instantly.