Online Exhibition

American Geography

When Matt Black began exploring his home in California’s rural Central Valley — known as “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 46 states and Puerto Rico, Black visited designated “poverty areas,” places with a poverty rate above 20 percent, and found that these areas are so numerous that they’re never more than a two-hour 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 six-year, 100,000-mile journey, which chronicles the vulnerable conditions faced by America’s poor.

Discarded liquor bottles collected by Matt Black during his travels across the United States. (one of two.) Multiple locations, USA, 2014-2020.

Page spread from American Artifacts, published by Thames and Hudson, 2024.

Fine Print: Birds, Tulare, California, 2014
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Fine Print: Cattle auction, Alturas, California, 2016
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Fine Print: Riders, Ziebach County, South Dakota, 2016
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Fine Print: Country road, Lindsay, California, 2013
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Fine Print: Modesto, California, 2014
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Fine Print: Burning tires, Corcoran, California, 2014
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'Photography has the ability to crystallize thought and emotion, and to motivate people to engage with the world. No other medium can match its strength.'

Matt Black

Published by Thames & Hudson, 2021

American Geography

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This compelling compilation of black-and-white photographs is accompanied by Black’s own travelogue — a collection of observations, overheard conversations in diners and public transportation, menu prices, 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 for anyone with an interest in witnessing the reality of an America that’s been excluded from the American Dream.
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ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER

Matt Black

Matt Black is from California’s Central Valley, a rural, agricultural area in the heart of the US state. Between 2014 and 2020, he traveled over 100,000 miles across 46 states for his project, American Geography, published by Thames & Hudson in 2021, accompanied by a traveling exhibition that opened at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg.

Other works include The Dry Land, about the impact of drought on California’s agricultural communities, and The Monster in the Mountains, about the disappearance of 43 students in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. Both these projects, accompanied by short films, were published by The New Yorker.

His work has appeared regularly in the US and international press, including Timemagazine, The New Yorker, Le Monde and Internazionale. In 2025 he was awarded The MacArthur Fellowship. He has been honored three times by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Prize. He received the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Award in 2015, and was named a senior fellow at the Emerson Collective. He was nominated to Magnum Photos in 2015, and became a full member in 2019.

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