While attending high school, he worked as a photographer at the Tulare Advance-Register, later the Visalia Times-Delta, where he learned the black and white photojournalism style he has used throughout his career.
[6] In the early 1990s, Black made several trips to Latin America, making work that in 1993 gained first prize in the Daily Life category of the World Press Photo Award.
[1] His 1996 article, "Homage to an Outlaw", published by West Magazine, marked the beginning of his long form photojournalism focusing on rural life in the Central Valley.
[11] In 2014, he began the project The Geography of Poverty, combining geotagged photographs with census data to map and document poor communities.
[12] In addition to still photography, Black has completed several short documentary films, including After the Fall,[13] Harvest of Shadows,[14] California Paradise Burning[15] and The Monster in the Mountains.