James Wallace Black (1825-1896) was an important early American photographer, and partner of John Adams Whipple from 1856-1859. Black took the first successful aerial photograph in the U.S. in 1860 from a balloon over the Boston Common, and a series of photographs of the Boston Fire of 1872. He began his career as a daguerreotypist in 1846, six years after the process was introduced in the U.S.

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