Matt Black

Matt Black (born 1970) is an American documentary photographer whose work has focused on issues of poverty, migration, and the environment. He is a full member of Magnum Photos. Black's first book, American Geography, was published in 2021 and was exhibited at Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany.

Life and work Black was born in 1970

In the early 1990s, Black made several trips to Latin America, making work that in 1993 gained first prize in the Daily Life category of the World Press Photo Award. and From Dust to Dust, about indigenous Mexican migrants in California, for which he received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism, Domestic Photography category, in 2007. Again working in the extended photo-essay form, major stories from this project include The Face of the Mountain, After the Fall and The Monster in the Mountains.

In 2014, he began the project The Geography of Poverty, combining geotagged photographs with census data to map and document poor communities. In the summer of 2015, he completed a thirty-state trip photographing seventy of America's poorest places.

In addition to still photography, Black has completed several short documentary films, including After the Fall, Harvest of Shadows, California Paradise Burning and The Monster in the Mountains.

In June 2015 he became a nominee member of Magnum Photos, later an associate member and in 2019 a full member. American Artifacts. Thames and Hudson, 2024. .

Awards 1994: First prize, Daily Life category, World Press Photo Award from World Press Photo, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2015: W. Eugene Smith Grant from the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund 2015: Gerald Loab Award shared with Tom Philpott for the feature article "California Goes Nuts" in Mother Jones 2025: Black was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, popularly known as the MacArthur Foundation's "Genius Award."

Exhibitions Solo exhibitions Matt Black: American Geography, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany, 2020/21