American Geography

- Blurb -

American Geography is the visual record of Magnum photographer Matt Black' s five-year, 100,000-mile road trip across 46 states of the United States, plus Puerto Rico. It examines the conditions of powerlessness, prejudice and pragmatism among America' s poor. The project originated in Matt Black' s exploration of his own home town in California' s rural Central Valley - a place that has been called ' the other California' - where one third of the population lives in poverty. Travelling out from that location in 2015, he went on to visit designated ' poverty areas' - places with poverty rates of above 20% as defined by the US census. He found that, rather than being anomalies, ' poverty areas' are never more than two-hour' s drive apart. They are woven throughout the fabric of the country, yet are cut off from the ' land of opportunity' . Matt Black' s compelling black and white photographs, from which one can trace a line back to the FSA Photographers of the 1930s and 1940s such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, are accompanied by his own travelogue - an eclectic combination of observations, overheard conversations in cafes and city buses, diner menus, bus timetables, historical facts and echoes from daily news reports - which enrich the vivid portrait of these ' states of un-America. ' With 100 illustrations in colour