New World Atlas is organized in a series of 17 chapters, one for each state lying west of the 100th meridian. This exhibition presents California & Nevada, the first two chapters of this larger body of work. In this series Black departs from conventional photographic representation and incorporates technologies that extend human perception. Thermal imaging makes the invisible visible, allowing viewers to witness heat as a signifier of change, from drought and fire to evaporation. Infrared photography distinguishes the living from the inert, exposing a shifting terrain beneath what once seemed immutable.

Matt Black’s work has been featured in The New Yorker, TIME Magazine, National Geographic, Harper’s, and The California Sunday Magazine, as well as international publications including Le Monde (France) and Internazionale (Italy), among others. A member of Magnum Photos, Black has been honored three times by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Prize, named a senior fellow at the Emerson Collective, and received the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Award for Humanistic Photography in 2015.