The Mystique of J.P. Ball, Cincinnati’s First Black Photographer, Still Endures - Cincinnati Magazine

The Mystique of J.P. Ball, Cincinnati’s First Black Photographer, Still Endures - Cincinnati Magazine

A recently discovered portrait of J.P. Ball, one of only two known to survive.Photograph courtesy collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture Ten years after Louis Daguerre revealed his process of exposing a chemical-embedded plate to light to create photography, a young man named James Presley Ball brought a daguerreotype camera to Cincinnati. J.P., as he called himself, had learned the inventor’s proce…