Matt Black
b.
1970From:
San Joaquin Valley, CABased:
Lemon Cove, CAPosition:
Freelance photographerEducation:
BA, Latin American and U.S. History, 1994Background:
Matt Black has been photographing rural life for over a decade, particularly focusing on California's San Joaquin Valley. He is attracted equally to exploring the landscape and atmosphere of small towns and empty places, as well as chronicling intimate, human stories of migration, agriculture and labor among farm workers and rural people. His photographs have been published and exhibited widely, and have been honored by grants and awards from the Alexia Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the California Arts Council, World Press Photo, and the National Press Photographers Association, among others.
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Work by Matt Black
#14 | Mixteca
The Mixteca--a remote, mountainous region in Northern Oaxaca--is the heartland of indigenous Mexico. In its scattered and isolated villages, Spanish is rarely heard, cars, electricity and indoor plumbing are recent introductions if they exist at all, and life's schedule continues to be dictated by the planting and harvesting of corn. But in recent years, migration to the United States has reached deeper into the heart of rural Mexico and, today, even into the Mixteca. Some villages have lost as much as 80 of their population to the north. Today, some are little more than ghost towns, populated by just a handful of old men, women and the left-behind children of migrants.