“As I continue this work today, instead of uncovering remnants of a flawed past, it feels more like a foreshadowing of a far darker future.” — Matt Black

Join us at Public Trust for America's Geography of Poverty, a conversation with Magnum photographer Matt Black on Wednesday, April 9, 2025 from 6-7:30pm about economic inequality in America and how best to represent the lived experience of being poor. This event is presented in partnership with Magnum Photos and will feature Black in conversation with Alissa Quart, director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and author most recently of Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream. Their conversation will revisit American Geography and American Artifacts, Black's visual record of his six-year, 100,000-mile journey chronicling thousands of high-poverty areas and the conditions and experiences of those for whom the American Dream was always an impossibility. They will also discuss the often hidden afflictions, beauty, and resistance within those who are suffering most. This event is sponsored by the SNF Paideia Program and the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of Pennsylvania. A community reception will follow.

Organized in conjunction with Magnum America / U.S.A. at Public Trust, America's Geography of Poverty takes its point of departure from the recent eponymous Magnum publication, which revisits work from the 1940s to the present and across the wide breadth of American history. Accompanied by an archival display of images, events in this series feature photographers from the book in dialogue about their work, the complexity of the democratic experiment, and the many contemporary social and political challenges confronting us today.