Arkansas

Jim Goldberg

2019 – Ongoing  — Arkansas, USA

About this series

In 2019 Jim Goldberg chose to work in the Arkansas Delta- with a particular focus on the neighboring towns of Augusta and McCrory. Augusta was once a thriving shipping hub for agricultural goods along the White River. In the late 1800s, Augusta rejected the opportunity to build a railroad through the city, choosing to rely on the river for its economic sustainability. In 1890, the railroad was instead built in the nearby town of McCrory. By the turn of the 20th century, railroads had replaced steamboats as the primary mode of shipping goods and transportation, marking the beginning of Augusta’s slow decline. Today, McCrory is the more prosperous of the two towns.
After spending time in Arkansas, Goldberg became fascinated by the people he met, a tangled web of post-civil war lineages, and their rich photographic history. Inspired by Walker Evans, Mike Disfarmer, and the White River Photo Studio of Hugo and Gayne Preller, he began setting up a pop-up studio and taking formal 4×5 portraits of the people in town.
As he became integrated into the fabric of daily life and his investment in the communities grew, so did his awareness of the complicated social dynamics in the small towns. Recognizing these complexities requires a nuanced and informed perspective, an awareness that the economic disparities are often tied to historical factors such as slavery, sharecropping, and land ownership. They are deeply rooted in history, culture, and geography.
To this day, the photographer continues to document these places as a personal project, focusing on their evolution as well as that of their citizens, completing the work within this community and recording the complicated layers of these two small towns.
(In collaboration with Magnum Photos )

Photographer: Jim Goldberg
Nationality: American
Based in: USA
Website: www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/jim-goldberg/
Instagram: @goldbergjim

Jim Goldberg’s innovative and multidisciplinary approach to documentary makes him a landmark photographer and social practitioner of our times. His work often examines the lives of neglected, ignored, or otherwise outside-the-mainstream populations through long-term, in depth collaborations which investigate the nature of American myths about class, power, and happiness.
A prolific and influential bookmaker, Goldberg’s recent books include Ruby Every Fall, Nazraeli Press (2014); The Last Son, Super Labo (2016); Raised By Wolves Bootleg (2016), Candy, Yale University Press (2017), Darrell & Patricia, Pier 24 Photography (2018) and Gene (2018).
Goldberg has exhibited widely, including shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; SFMOMA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Corcoran Gallery of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Yale University Art Gallery. His work is also regularly featured in group exhibitions around the world. Public collections including MoMA, SFMOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Getty, the National Gallery, LACMA, MFA Boston, The High Museum, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Library of Congress, MFA Houston, National Museum of American Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Goldberg has received three National Endowment of the Arts Fellowships in Photography, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, among many other honors and grants.
Goldberg is Professor Emeritus at the California College of the Arts. He is represented by Casemore Gallery in San Francisco. Goldberg joined Magnum Photos in 2002.