A Photographic Life - 255: Special Interview with Matt Black

In this special extended episode 251 UNP founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed speaking with photographer Matt Black. They discuss the tradition of the American road trip, the importance of stepping out of your comfort zone, politics and photography and the ethical responsibility of the visual storyteller amongst many other aspects of the American photographic tradition. Matt Black lives in California’s Central Valley, a rural, agricultural area in the heart of the state. His work has focused on themes of geography, inequality, and the environment in his native region and in related places. Between 2015 and 2020, he travelled over 100,000 miles across 46 states for his project and subsequent book American Geography, named as one of TIME Magazine's top photography books in 2021. He is a member of Magnum and his work has appeared regularly in TIME magazine, The New Yorker, The California Sunday Magazine, and other publications. Back has been honoured three times by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Prize, including their top honour for journalism, he has received the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Award for Humanistic Photography and was named a senior fellow at the Emerson Collective. www.mattblack.com Dr. Grant Scott is the founder/curator of United Nations of Photography, a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, a working photographer, documentary filmmaker, BBC Radio contributor and the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was first screened in 2018 www.donotbendfilm.com. He is the presenter of the A Photographic Life and In Search of Bill Jay podcasts. © Grant Scott 2023