Sean Black is an artist, university educator and journalist working in the fields of social justice and human equality. Identifying as queer, his early escape into television and fantasy underscores his personal work while subtly exposing his personal struggles with addiction, trauma and living with HIV/AIDS. He hopes that his transparency might help others along a similar path of recovery and healing.
His decade-long tenure as Senior Editor with A&U: America’s AIDS Magazine afforded him tremendous opportunities interviewing and photographing a number of celebrity and political luminaries in the fight against AIDS including Sheryl Lee Ralph, Gilles Marini, Julie Newmar, MJ Rodriguez, Alicia Keys, Dita Von Teese, Kylie Minogue, Chloë Sevigny, Melissa Rivers, Teddy and Milissa Sears, David Arquette, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Congressman Barney Frank, Cleve Jones, Timothy Ray Brown, Greg Louganis and many more; thus growing the publication’s mission of collecting, archiving, publishing and distributing the art, activism, and current events emanating from the AIDS pandemic.
His work has been published internationally in PEOPLE Magazine, LA Times, Huffington Post, USA Today, NBC News, GQ Brazil, Ebony, The NewStatesman, Stern Magazine, Playbill, Springer Medizin and others. He is currently a full-time Lecturer at the University of Miami where he received his MFA in 2013, he continues to work as an independent journalist and a commercial/fine art photographer. He also holds an MA in Photography from California State University San Bernardino (2009) and a BS degree in Information Technology from Barry University (2004).
He has lectured and exhibited nationally. Recent shows include the Society for Photographic Education’s Combined Caucus Exhibition juried by Zackary Drucker, Harvey Milk Photo Center’s PRIDE Exhibition and O.X.E.S. Artivismo em Exposicao Exhibition in collaboration with condom-artist and activist Adriana Bertini. His work has recently been acquired by the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMOPA).