Matt Black Unamerican Dream

Film director Joppe Jacob Rog follows photographer Matt Black throughout his home in California’s Central Valley.

Between 2014 and 2020, Matt Black traveled over 100,000 miles across 46 states. His book American Geography documents the experiences of those living in some of the poorest communities in the nation. Starting in his home in the 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 the US census defines 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.