Matt Black: From Flint to Hiroshima

The terms “story teller” and “storytelling” are bandied about quite easily these days in relation to picture making. It’s consistently impressive, though, how much Matt Black can put in play in one frame. In this case, what’s even more noteworthy than the poetry of this image from Flint is what Matt dares with the caption. (You can read it below.)

Floods, tornados and fire storms come and go, but the contamination of an entire city’s water supply is fairly unique as a high profile, domestic news story. What’s even more unique, then, and also mind bending, is how Black brings Hiroshima into it. It works because snow is close enough to water. Mostly though, the analogy to fallout speaks of terror and scale.

Caption:

Flint, MI.  Snowfall outside a shuttered K-Mart. “We’ve kinda created our own Hiroshima. Generations from now, we’ll still be feeling the effects.”

Update: Thanks to black_dog_barking in the comment thread. “Nuclear winter” was the term in the back of my brain that connects Matt’s comment and the photo. I just couldn’t surface it.

(photo: @mattblack_blackmatt/Instagram)