Magnum Poster: Riders, South Dakota, 2016

For six years, Matt Black photographed communities and lands in the US where at least 20% of the population live in poverty. Starting with isolated communities in California’s Central Valley, the rural area where he grew up, Black expands the project into a greater portrait of an ever more divided and unequal America, where lives are shaped and constrained by their geography. Travelling 100,000 miles through the country, Black sets out to explore the reality of the American Dream, debunking the myth of America as a land of opportunity as he goes. “From a ground level, America looks very different from the stories we like to tell ourselves,” he says.