Skip to main content

Matt Black's American Geography

A cross-posting from my Geography in/on Film blog.

Matt Black's 'American Geography' is a film to accompany a project where he explores the poorer parts of the USA.
It is a Magnum Photos project.



Between 2015 and 2020, Matt Black traveled over 100,000 miles across 46 states. American Geography documents the experiences of those living in some of the poorest communities in the nation. Starting in his hometown in California’s Central Valley, where billions of dollars are generated every year in agricultural output but one-third of the population lives in poverty, he traveled to other areas of “concentrated poverty” – as US census definition of places with a poverty rate of 20 percent or more. What Black found is that rather than being distant anomalies, these communities were rarely more than a two-hour drive apart enabling him to cross the country without ever crossing above the poverty line.

There is also a website which has further details on the project including diaries, photographs, images of Matt's Greyhound bus tickets and other ephemera. It's really nicely put together and I'm sure could form the basis for an exploration of the southern states of the USA.

The film can be viewed on the link above.

He also visits Flint, Michigan


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ideal scenery

Check out this Robert MacFarlane tweet, and the replies that follow for a whole host of ideas on different people's ideal landscapes... Some wonderful images and brief descriptions ideal for sharing... "Tramlines and slagheaps, pieces of machinery, That was, and still is, my ideal scenery." WH Auden Question: what is your "ideal scenery"? pic.twitter.com/8QLS0HRZt9 — Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) July 6, 2017

The path more travelled

I'm currently reading Nicholas Crane's new book on the history of Britain's footpaths: how they came about originally following the drowning of Doggerland , and were then refined by successive waves of change: horses, the Roman invasion etc. It's a dense and scholarly work, with plenty of points of interest and relevance to geographers exploring the connections between people and the landscape. He's taking his book on the road in a series of talks, with three confirmed so far. Here's the description for his talk at Stanford's book shop at the end of the month . He's also speaking in Exeter and Stamford. Walking is a cornerstone of British identity and the most popular form of exercise in the UK. But how much do we know about the paths that we walk? What is their history? Why do they follow the routes that they do? Are they permanent? Can we designate more of them?​ The Path More Travelled is a coast-to-coast history of footpaths from the stone age paths...

Glacier Melt Visualisation

This nice interactive infographic visualises the ice loss from Switzerland's glaciers. It is one of several from the VisQuill site , developed by Dr. Benjamin Niedermann.