WE’RE DRIVING toward Porterville, California, when Matt Black explains his attempt to escape geography. Black is a photographer, and Central Valley towns like this have long been the setting of his work, the people in them his subjects. Farmers and migrant workers. Droughts and heatwaves. It’s a corner of the country he felt needed attention, the breadbasket of America. It’s his home.
Place may have been at the heart of his photography, gritty and black-and-white images rooted strongly in a social documentary tradition, but by 2014 Black had come to realize that place could be a prison, too. The iconic depictions of the Central Valley—from The Grapes of Wrath to the photos of Dorothea Lange to the more recent work focusing on the lives of Latinx migrants—seemed to lock the region into a particular set of cultural meanings. The plight of the Central Valley was seen as a California problem, detached from the larger story of poverty in the United States.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November/December 2021-Ausgabe von Mother Jones.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November/December 2021-Ausgabe von Mother Jones.
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In the Name of the Mother - How Shyamala Gopalan Harris raised a presidential contender
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WHEN IN DROUGHT
This obscure yet adaptable grain could be a healthy staple for a warming planet.
BAD HABITS
A spate of recent horror movies recycle tired tropes about nuns-and reveal society's ongoing discomfort with independent women.
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Imagine obamacare is dead and millions of Americans have lost health coverage.
THE ARCHITECT
TRUMP WANTS TO BE KING. RUSS VOUGHT HAS A PLAN TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Losing Faith
As an evangelical leader, I enticed lawmakers and federal judges to adopt a conservative Christian agenda. Donald Trump’s rise proved how wrong I was.
GOD'S COUNTRY
These Christian nationalists have a plan to take over Americafrom small towns to the highest court in the land.
