Matt Black: American Geography
Magnum Gallery and online 63 London
 

AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY explores themes of inequality against the backdrop of the American Dream. The exhibition will coincide with the launch of Black’s eponymous book by Thames & Hudson.
 
For those who wish to know and who are willing to dig beneath the mounds of Hollywood tinsel, the TV soap operas and the US’s own propaganda, it is no secret that the richest country on Earth has not only the greatest gulf between rich and poor but also huge numbers of very poor people, left behind by the American dream.

Even for those reasonably well off, falling into the poverty sink hole is always only a few steps away. Black documents that world the US elite wishes to hide from its own people and the rest of the world.
 
In 2013, he began photographing isolated communities in California’s Central Valley, the rural, agricultural area where he lives. In 2015, he expanded the project to encompass the United States as a whole and completed his first cross-country trip, a three-and-a-half-month journey visiting dozens of communities across 28 states.

Since then, he has completed four additional trips, travelling over 100,000 miles and making work across 46 states. He discovered that he could cross the country without ever emerging above the poverty line.