?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(PHOTOGRAPHY.) James Presley Ball, photographer. Carte-de-visite portrait of a white lawman, signed "JPB" on verso. Albumen photograph, 3½ x 2 inches, on original mount with gilt border and "J.P. Ball's Photographic Institute" backmark, inscribed "J.P.B." on the 3-cent proprietary revenue stamp; minimal foxing and wear, small tape remnant on verso. Cincinnati, OH, circa 1864-1866
John Presley Ball (1825-1904) was one of the first Black photographers in America, learning his trade in Boston, launching his own itinerant studio in 1845, settling in Cincinnati from 1849 through the early 1870s, and then running studios in a succession of several southern and western towns until his death in Hawaii in 1904. The unidentified sitter in this image wears a badge on his lapel, suggesting perhaps a police officer or sheriff. Revenue stamps were only required on photographs from June 1864 through July 1866.
