Conversation (October 2020)

Fred Ritchin: When I knew this project, it was called “The Geography of Poverty,” and you changed the name. And could you explain why?

Matt Black: It was a feeling I had for a while. What I was doing was not a portrait of marginalized America, but a portrait of America itself. And that the point that needed to be made was how much this is a part of American life, not something on the edges.

But do you think you're dealing now with the mainstream of America, with this center of America? How would you define it?

What I'm getting at is at the center of the American experience. And people tend to focus on the bright and shiny parts of the country, but not the parts that are intimately connected to that prosperity but don’t share in it. For instance, where I live in the Central Valley, this area produces a quarter of the food in the United States, but enjoys very little of the benefit. It's still one of the poorest areas of the country.

So I guess you're also saying they're overlooked, when media does coverages and so on, it is on the bright and shiny, or it's on the extremes of violence or protests or whatever it would be, but the people who actually do the work, and provide, as you said the food for the country and so on are overlooked.

Exactly my point.

So you're not seeing any social mobility then, the big American Dream, Horatio Alger, and all that was that this is a country where it could pick you up by your bootstraps, and do what's needed to get an education, skill sets, and move on up. You're not seeing that?

Not seeing that. Seeing the opposite of that. That your future is determined largely by where you are born.

And is there anything else in there? It is a gender issue, a race issue, ethnic issue, religious issue? Is it just the geography, or is it something else, part of that equation?

I mean, part of the way I'm feeling about this work and particularly in the context that we're in right now is I feel what needs to be made are universal statements. And that's what I've attempted to do here in this work, is to understand people united by this framework, living in areas that you don’t normally see put together in one body of work. Within that broad grouping there's many different issues, many different identities, and many different things going on. But what we're seeing is now is how these differences have been harnessed to divide. That's completely contrary to where I'm coming from.

Here in New York right now, there's all these kinds of conversations which are based not so much on geography, but are based upon issues of race and sexual orientation, religion, as reasons why people are particularly brutalized, why people are discriminated against, why people bear burdens that other people don't bear. And the reference is not to a particular place necessarily; the reference is to the inevitability of a diminished life potential, because one is, for example, born black as opposed to white. But what you're talking about seems to be something that's very much like a social economic infrastructure, which involves everybody who's born in that place. That even if you're born Protestant or Catholic, or white or black or whatever you might be born, you're still going to have enormous difficulties trying to extricate yourself from it or have any sense of self or self-worth. Is that an accurate-

Yes, that is precisely how I feel. And that's something that's just borne out by experience. None of this is to diminish those critiques, which of course are true and need to be done, but the broadening of those critiques, which I also think needs to happen. Place is important. It is another mechanism by which social power gets expressed in America.

So in your ideal vision then, the rest of us would be informed as to what's going on in many geographies, in many parts of the country; we would take notice of it. Laws would be passed and so on, so that the benefits would be distributed more equally, so that there'd be more attention, more respect, for these other areas.

Yes, but first of all, we have to recognize what America is, and who gets to define what America is. These hierarchies of power are what the work is exploring, who gets what and when and where, and who gets to say what America is. And that's what I'm talking about. America from the ground level is very different.

How do you compare this to, let's say the 1930s, the FSA, the attempts by the government to be supportive of groups of people who normally didn't have a safety blanket? Are you seeing pretty much the opposite at this point? That the government is not being supportive and the people are being overlooked, as opposed to the 1930s where we were actually using photography to look at people and to take them into account.

It is exactly the opposite, and on the part of the current government it seems to be motivated, not by caring, but by spite. If you pay attention to food stamps and other supports like that across the country, they're being slashed to the point of almost irrelevancy, zero. And it's being done with a sense of punishment and spite.

So how do those poor respond to this? Do they think it's with anger themselves, with bitterness, with a sense of being resigned, how do they respond?

I've tried to deal with in the work the psychology of powerlessness, and what these things, how they influence people's thinking about themselves, and about their communities. And it is something I think is underestimated. In the end, these things are not just about finances.

Which they feel it's their fault somehow.

Exactly. And that's why talking about these things is so fraught, and so complicated in America because we still accept these “bootstrap” ideas as being valid, when all experience is to the contrary. But people still accept these mythologies, “the land of opportunity” and so on.

So what motivated you to make this hundred-thousand-mile journey?

I don't know if you know that much about me or where I'm coming from, but just to step back for a second, my goal for many years as a photographer was to focus on my place, to use my work to be a voice for this place. And when I first started this project, the focus again was on this part of California and trying to take a different, more of a step-back look. I did that for about a year.

But then what happened with the work and also with myself is I felt like I had 20 years of working here in California, but when I would work on ideas here, I always had in mind the universal. To me, it was obvious the connections, it was obvious that we're all connected, but I found that few people were willing to make that leap with me. It almost becomes a self-defeating thing. Because to say, okay, for example, “in the Central Valley of California or in rural Mississippi, these stories exist” -- by doing it that way, it makes it easier to ignore. Like saying, “Keep it over there, somewhere far away from us.” So, the idea was to try to bring it as close as possible to show how universal it is in this country, these sorts of experiences.

Also I'm trying to grab at something else that I think is really important. Coming back to the Central Valley, it's essentially a colony, an interior colony of America. It's an extractive thing. It's not included in this American story that's been written elsewhere. It just feeds the raw materials for that American story to unfold. For me growing up, it was a sense that “the place I'm from is not part of what I see on TV.” And there's a built-in sense of disempowerment that goes with that. Anyone who's from a place like this knows the feeling very well. I tried to harness and internalize that feeling as much as possible, the tragedy and disillusionment that goes along with that. I used that to inform the pictures.

How big is that America that you're talking about? What percentage of the country in your mind do you see it as?

This is the country. It is. If you go and look on the ground level, this is America.

And they'd been left out of not only TV and movies and newspapers and magazines and so on, but they've been left out of government policies or support networks, or the chance for higher education, of skill training, the whole thing?

Clean water, clean air, health care, life expectancy -- just go straight down the list, any which way possible that injustice can be manifested, it's there.

Do you feel that the impact of Lange’s “Migrant Mother” could be replicated today in any way? Do you think that image, your images, anybody else's images could focus the country, or do you think we're in a different place now?

Yes, I think they can. I mean, and I think they continue to. The hard part about trying to identify those pictures is we don't have the benefit of retrospect. I don't think we're going to know what those images are until later. But I still believe that photography has the ability to crystallize thought and emotion, and to motivate people to think and connect with each other. If I didn't believe that, I couldn't be doing this.

But do you think it works better on the local level, nationally, internationally? I'm not seeing that many iconic images. We are going through a massive depression, a pandemic, but I don't see the equivalent of the Dorothea Lange images, an icon to focus. Yes, I agree with you that there many images have impact, but I'm trying to get at is it a series of images that make a difference now? How does it work differently? Does Facebook do it better than The New York Times used to do it? What's your opinion?

Yeah, I mean, photography has changed. It's much more common. And I think you're right, now it's more about a sustained engagement than about the individual image. And maybe that's good, maybe an individual image can simplify things too much, but I still think despite that, despite the fact that we're just kind of awash in images, photography still can and does perform that function. It communicates on a human level and an emotional level. I don't think that ability has changed at all.

Okay, now let's switch to something else, which is your printing. You have a very distinctive quality of print that you make. You're also working in black-and-white. And what are you trying to get at with the print? They're very dramatic images the way you make them and so on. What's your intention in the printing and the choice of black and white?

The pictures look to me how pictures should look. And I can go into a little bit of detail of what it's like to photograph in an environment like here in the Central Valley, and that it's very difficult to get a full-range image in a place that is so saturated with sun. When I learned photography, it was all in black and white, and to get a full range image, you had to push your film in order to get a black and a white. You had to use contrasty film or everything just came out grey. And since then I've never really changed or questioned it. To me, that's just how photographs look.

It's funny, David Goldblatt said pretty much the same thing as you. Living in South Africa, they asked him, why don't you have light like the Europeans? And he said, the light here is completely different, that it's never going to look like them. So that's what you grow up in, that's what you see.

Interesting. Yes, that’s it. And to press that idea further, there’s a lot tied up with what you grow up in, that’s what you see. It’s a part of you, it’s how you see things. It’s what makes your work distinctive, and you can hone it but not make it up from scratch, and every photographer has to find it for themselves and then explore it as fully as possible because that’s what they have.

Just to get a little deeper in this, you grew up in the Central Valley, you're still in the Central Valley. Is the choice because of culture, because you really like it there? Is the choice because of family, friends, because you're familiar? What went into the choice to... you're very loyal to it, you remain there. A lot of people don't. A lot of people move away, especially from areas that have their share of hardships as the Central Valley does. So what's your thinking there?

Well, first of all, it's home and yes, family is here. And then secondly, a degree of commitment, feeling like I have an obligation to continue to work here. And then third, it gives me the proper perspective. It would be hard to maintain my own clarity without being here. So it's all three of those things together, equally weighted.

So you're feeling then, as the insider because there's an authenticity for you in remaining in the Central Valley and growing up there and being the inside guy, you see things differently than an outsider would, I'm assuming.

Well, I think the insider/outsider thing is really complicated. I think the moment you pick up a camera, you are automatically outside the situation you're in. So I don't presume to adopt any sort of personal morality out of what I'm talking about. What I mean is for me personally, to maintain my clarity of thought, it just serves me better to be here.

How do you know when you're doing the right thing? This is part of what I was asking about your working method, do you talk with the people? You wouldn't make an image of somebody you just passed on the street standing in front of something. You'll talk to people.

Absolutely. A big part of this project has been interviewing people and getting their voices and stories. I would never make an image that I felt was going to harm somebody.

Okay, and how would you define doing harm to people with photos? What does that mean?

To me, it’s important that you're taking an image that is truthful and not denigrating. An earned image that’s fair. This project has been two very different ways of working, sandwiched into one body of work. One is walking the spaces, walking the streets, cities, and towns, just observing and making images like that. The other has been the series of very focused stories where I'm working much more as a traditional photojournalist, which my own personal history and background is more aligned with. For example, I just finished a big project about drinking water across the US, a half-dozen or so different areas across the country connected with contamination and access to clean drinking water; other stories, going to Puerto Rico after the hurricane, the run-up to Standing Rock, Flint. Spending time with people, working in a much slower fashion. It's very much a collaborative journalistic enterprise when I'm doing those.

Explain collaborative, collaborate with the subject, with the writer?

Collaborative in terms of communicating a story. For instance, when you're photographing contaminated drinking water, you're going into people's houses and you're seeing bathrooms and how people interact with water in all these different ways. Mothers trying to give their children baths by pouring in little tiny bottles of drinking water. So it's collaborative in terms of agreeing this is something that should be documented. And respecting the ability of the camera to change things.

Let's talk about text a little bit, because it's outside the frame as a way of contextualizing, as a way of doing it. So you have a lot of these kind of diary segments, meeting people, what it was like, what you felt. Is your intention to contextualize with what we're just talking about, here's somebody without drinking water. And the text then says “X percent of Americans don't have drinking water.” Do you think of it that way, or is it a more lyrical approach without those kinds of overarching statistics and so on?

My feeling about both the photographs and the text is that I am taking you with me, and I'm anticipating us both to be approaching things in an emotionally open way. And then we will experience those realities and become better through it, become more aware, become more sensitive to other people’s experiences. I have a hard time using facts as kind of a bludgeon. We're surrounded by facts; what we're not surrounded by is meaning. That's what photography does best.

Is the emotional side, the empathetic side, the experiential side.

Absolutely. To me, the important thing is to make sure that I'm constantly feeling that my intention is pure and that I'm staying true to that. Then all these other things can come through. And what I mean by these other things is sometimes very specific things, in terms of documentary, but also very abstract things and things that are hard to pin down, feelings and emotions. But if all of those elements are encompassed in a true way, it comes across. It comes through.

Do you get a lot of response or do you get more response outside the US to this work or from Europe or elsewhere, or you do get more response in the US and other countries see this as a more exotic, or how does that work?

I talk to people from elsewhere, and they say this is the first thing they see when they come to America. They’re shocked by the visual, street-level reality of America. And I think that just points out... again, this myopia that we were talking about before, Fred, this blind spot that Americans have. It becomes so easy to unsee ourselves.