In 2021, photographer Matt Black published American Geography, a record of his 100,000 mile, 46-state journey to more than 1,200 of the most desperate communities in America, places where the poverty rate exceeds 20 percent. The book was full of people living hand-to-mouth in spectacularly ugly places — a world of leaky roofs and broken mailboxes, trash-strewn lots and long shadows on mostly empty streets. Black also included entries from his own travelogue, as well as snatches of commentary from people he met. It was a devastating portrait of those the rest of us have left behind.
In American Artifacts, Black shifts his focus from people and places to the things he found on his odyssey, including lottery tickets and matchbooks, job applications, and broken tools. By the end of his travels, he had “accumulated over 3.000 of these objects, labeled, annotated, and boxed.” In his home studio, he “photographed each of them under the bright light of a flash.”
The result is a collection of stunning black and white images, a photographic record of things no one wants anymore. To wit: A Master lock with a broken shackle. A lone running shoe half-buried in a dusty road. A discarded crutch. A comb with most of its teeth missing. A rusted safety pin. A pair of eyeglasses with only one lens.