“Equal to Any in the City:” Ball & Thomas Photographs 1840s–1870s places James Presley Ball where he belongs: at the center of American photographic history. On view at Union Terminal from July 3 to October 14, 2026, the special exhibition draws from the Cincinnati Museum Center’s J.P. Ball photograph collection, the largest in the United States, and presents more than 100 original photographs that chart the rise of a free man of color who built a national reputation through skill, ambition and persistence.
Ball opened his first Cincinnati studio in the 1840s and later formed a partnership with his brother-in-law Alexander S. Thomas, creating Ball & Thomas, a studio that became known as “the finest photographic gallery west of the Allegheny Mountains.” Their work moved easily between celebrity portraiture and intimate family sittings. Among Ball’s sitters were Frederick Douglass, Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens, but the collection also preserves the lives of African American families whose images rarely entered official histories.
That balance gives the exhibition its force. The photographs do more than showcase technical mastery in daguerreotype and early studio portraiture; they document a Black visual culture taking shape in plain view, in a city where race, commerce and representation carried extraordinary stakes. Ball’s images show subjects who are composed, dignified and individualized, asserting presence in a period when such recognition was far from guaranteed.
The exhibition also brings forward the network around Ball, including Thomas and painter Robert S. Duncanson, underscoring that Black artistic excellence in the 19th century was not isolated but collaborative. Seen within the broader context of America 250 and the 2026 FotoFocus Biennial, the show reads as both historical survey and corrective, restoring attention to a photographer whose work shaped how Americans saw themselves and each other.
At Union Terminal, Ball & Thomas photographs stand as evidence of craftsmanship, enterprise and visibility, and of a visual record that still carries urgency today.
Image: Ball & Thomas Studio, Frederick Douglass, 1867. Carte de visite, 4 × 2½ inches. Courtesy of Cincinnati Museum Center
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