Like multitudes of other Black youths, Jason Miccolo Johnson has obviously lived through those emotional and religious rituals that lent shape - not only to his life, but to the Black experience as well. Now, through the devout eye of his camera, he recaptures past moments of sacred worship. And he chooses to call the magnificent collection, SOUL SANCTUARY.

How splendidly it awakens memories of those sacred Sundays of my own childhood; when God took over and all angels were black and sinners caught the wrath of a belligerent preacher's tongue. And not to be forgotten were the downtrodden and the faithful. Then, of course, there were the dispossessed.

Jason Johnson's efforts are thorough. His camera has taken intimate glimpses at just about everyone who worshipped in Black churches wherever he found them. Missouri's "Boot Heel" country offered the jarring religion of the Pentecostal. Later, he watched Black hands baptize Mt. Zion skulls in Memphis, Tennessee.

As a boy back in Kansas, I, too, watched those same baptisms, but to the uplifting sound of a Black Methodist choir. The experiences were, without doubt, the same. Worshipping the Lord within the sanctuary of a Black church is an experience that's not to be surpassed. Jason's photographs pushed me back into that sanctuary. Put Gabriel's horn in my hands, and urged me to shout - Hallelujah!