Matt Black:

The Documentary Commitment

3. Influences
Contents Influences 3

Farm Security Administration (FSA) 4

Library of Congress FSA Photography Archive 7

Matt Black: The Documentary Commitment – Influences 2

Influences Many of Matt Black’s influences are drawn from the history, imagery,
literature and music that was produced during the Dust Bowl: a period
of severe dust storms that destroyed the ecology of American states
including Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas, leading approximately 500,000
inhabitants to migrate to California in search of work and in the hope of
finding a better life. He explains how this period in time and the cultural
exchange of these new migrants became part of the “DNA” of the Central
Valley and its inhabitants, citing John Steinbeck’s realist novel The Grapes
of Wrath and the music of Woody Guthrie as key influences.

Matt Black: The Documentary Commitment – Influences 3

Farm Security During the 1930s, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated
the New Deal programs, in an attempt to relieve the desperate economic
situation of the Great Depression and restore prosperity to Americans. As

Administration (FSA) part of this, The Farm Security Administration (otherwise referred to as the
FSA) was tasked with employing photographers to build a visual record of
the effects of the depression on everyday life in rural America, in particular
the poor living and working conditions among tenant farmers and
migrant farm workers, with the aim to document the need for government
assistance and promote the New Deal programs.

Staff photographers included many now well known photographers:

Gordon Parks, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn,
Jack Delano, Marion Post Wolcott, John Vachon, Theodor Jung, John
Collier Jr, Carl Mydans and perhaps most famously Dorothea Lange
whose photograph, commonly referred to as ‘Migrant Mother’, would
go on to become the most iconic image of the depression era and of the
FSA’s archive.

Matt Black: The Documentary Commitment – Influences 4

Dorothea Lange. Destitute
pea pickers in California.
Mother of seven children.
Age thirty- two. Nipomo,
California. 1936. Library
of Congress, Prints &
Photographs Division, Farm
Security Administration/
Office of War Information
Black-and-White Negatives.

Matt Black: The Documentary Commitment – Influences 5

 Black describes how discovering the
work of the FSA photographers as a
young man was a revelation for him,
surprised by how his hometown was
deemed important enough for the US
government to send a photographer
to. Just starting out, he was inspired
by the role of reporting from the
FSA photographers: that people’s
individual struggles mattered and that
they were worthy of being recorded.

Matt Black: The Documentary Commitment – Influences 6

Library of Congress Today, the photographs produced for the FSA form an extensive record
of American life between 1935 and 1944 with the collection including
approximately 175,000 photographs, many of which can be viewed online

FSA Photography at The Library of Congress’ website.

Archive

Matt Black: The Documentary Commitment – Influences 7

Assignment Spend time exploring the Library of Congress FSA photography archive.
You can view images photographed in Matt Black’s wider home area by
searching for Tulare County, Visalia or Exeter.

Resources The Gordon Parks Foundation

The Arthur Rothstein Legacy Project
The Gordon Parks Foundation

Matt Black: The Documentary Commitment – Influences 8

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