Freelance photographer Matt Black, 32, is currently working on a series of stories about rural life in his native San Joaquin Valley, an agricultural region in central California. From photographing struggling family farms to documenting issues of agricultural immigration, rural ethnic diversity, poverty and farm labor, this project seeks to explore changes in contemporary rural life. Portions of this project have been published in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, West Magazine of the San Jose Mercury News, and others. Some of this work was also featured in a one-man, sixteen-month traveling exhibition, In This Land, which visited seven California museums, accompanied by a 48-page catalog that paired his photographs with oral histories. This exhibition received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the California Council for the Humanities. Prior to working in the Valley, he studied Latin American history -- BA, San Francisco State University, 1994 -- and completed several projects in Mexico, Guatemala and Bolivia. His work from Latin America has received awards from the World Press Photo Foundation and the National Press Photographers Association. His work has also been honored by the Sunday Magazine Editors Association, and Communication Arts, and has been published in Der Spiegel, the New York Times, Newsweek, the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, Stern, and others.