Street facade, Boston, c.1860

After trying his luck as a painter in Boston, J.W. Black turned to photography, beginning as a daguerreotype plate polisher. He became the partner of John Adams Whipple, a prolific Boston photographer and inventor. Brown is also credited with taking the first aerial photographs in the United States - of Boston - shot from a hot air balloon in October 1860, two years after the French photographer Nadar conducted his earliest experiments over Paris. These aerial techniques were adopted by the Union Army during the American Civil War.