Black Vents: Stanley J. Johnson’s Expressive Apertures
Published August 29th 2025
By Danelle Bernten
Stanley J. Johnson’s most recent photographic exhibition displayed the Black nude body and its bare feelings in Naked Emotions Exposed at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University’s Foster-Tanner Fine Arts Gallery in Tallahassee, Florida from January 16, 2025 to April 25, 2025. In this small but powerful black and white exhibition, photography Professor and creative artist Johnson captures the stark truth. The African American community needs more emotive and therapeutic release of grief, regret, and rage. While his focus was to highlight the dearth of mental health resources and mental health discussion amongst US-Blacks, his work reveals the possible reparation of ruptures in the mind-body connection from trauma and suffering through wet tears and dry shouts. Mental health statistics for US-Blacks are dire especially in regards to rates of suicide. In 2022, suicide was the third leading cause of death for African Americans ages 10-24 according to statistics provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (1)
In the photograph of Calvin Bryant titled Release (2025; Fig. 1), we are provided one photograph in which the Black male sheds visible tears, unlike the invisible tears James Baldwin spoke of to his nephew in the essay, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation”(2). Baldwin speaks of his brother’s adult invisible tears that are present in laughter, speech, or songs. Here, the tears Johnson renders with his camera are not absorbed by music, jokes, or sermons. They fearlessly plunge without removal or disguise.
Fig. 1 Stan Johnson, Release, 2024, Black and white Photograph, 16 x 20 in, Private Collection
Johnson successfully offers an intimate setting for the ordinary sitter, not actor, to divulge his troubles to the artist and the world. Instead of the image of the hardened Black male unperturbed by his struggles with racism, stereotyping, or discrimination, we stand in front of a visceral image of an unshielded figure depicted in sensitive lights and darks. In the second photograph entitled, Infuriation (2025; Fig. 2), Johnson depicts the same sitter howling his hurt.
Fig. 2 Stan Johnson, Infuriation, 2024, Black and white Photograph, 16 x 20 in, Private Collection
In the deliverance of his yell, Calvin Bryant liberates both mind and body from its immediate tension. In his open mouth, we do not find a pleasing sound of musical notation, but the Black notes of exasperation. Johnson depicts an image that we do not find commonly in visual art nor in popular culture; the Black Male disclosing furious abandon in a safe and accepting environment. Moreover, the nudity of the sitter offers a secondary level of exposure. Instead of an image of the sexualization of the Black male, we see a sculpted figure of classical beauty and modesty. The smooth texture of his skin and body are not the erotic nor objectified Black male skins à la Mapplethorpe. We are drawn automatically to his external tears, making us ponder the state of our internal storms. Are they brewing, ready to storm, or dispersed? How have we managed to emotionally handle these internal storms? What repair is needed in ourselves and our community to bring about societal healing?
Johnson answers the third question with his photography. Art can provide a venue of exploration and connection when we observe the varied landscape of fervid teardrops or piercing anger. We may not know the stories behind these emotions, but the emotions are uncovered. Johnson has stripped his male model of the comforts of clothing and anonymity. The unclad model echoes his internal anguish, while Johnson seizes the moment on camera and photographic chiaroscuro. In Johnson’s other photographs of the Black female or male nude, the tear is not as conspicuous. We observe sadness or depression, but not physical tears. Even in a welcoming environment, the Black figure is not easily convinced that it is safe to show affliction and torment.
In the poignant image of Cameron Hawkins in Fragility (2025; Fig. 3), we perceive a seated Black body with head down and arms and legs crossed. The opaque closing off of the body to the artist and viewer obscures the female gender and thoughts of the subject—almost embodying a sense of shame.
Fig. 3 Stan Johnson, Fragility, 2024, Black and white Photograph, 16 x 20 in, Private Collection
Her frame conceals the contents of her mind and almost her body. She is all arms and legs forging a rigid geometric composition amid sinewy skin. The image conflicts with the notion of repair and imparts a vision of blockage. The subject sculpts her own physical ensemble of guilt and rejection of the body. The photographer cannot reach any further. The subject has established her boundaries and we are not privy to inner turmoil nor bliss. We may assume that she is hiding sorrow, but that may not be the case. She may be protecting her joy from the dangerous gaze of American society.
In Naked Emotions Exposed, Johnson unveils the health of the mind and body by the entry or denial of light and revelation of interior sentiments.
(1) CDC. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS). http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.htm quoted on the website of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Office of Minority Health) site, Accessed May 15, 2025 at https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/mental-and-behavioral-health-blackafrican-americans,
(2) James Arthur Baldwin, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” in The Fire Next Time (New York: Modern Library, 1995), 29.
Danelle Bernten is a doctoral candidate in Art History at Florida State University. Her recent publications have appeared in Ruckus Journal, Journal of Visual Culture, and Studies in American Culture (University of South Alabama).