Jonathan Ball (b. 1972) was first exposed to photography when he was a small child, as he watched his father at work in the darkroom he built in the basement of the family’s house. By the time he was eleven, he was making and developing his own photographs.
Over the years, his work has ranged from photojournalism to commercial work to independent art projects. His independent projects include a study of factories where mobile homes, RV’s and sailing yachts are made; a series of portraits and interviews of nearly 100 foreigners living in Prague in 1994; photographs made with homemade “cubist” pinhole cameras that photograph a subject from many points of view simultaneously; and an ongoing series of images of things and people he sees and experiences in his daily life.
Recently, Ball spent a remarkable year and a half hiking the Great Wall with world renowned expert, David Spindler. They documented some of the Wall’s most significant battle sites on the anniversary date of each battle. Ball made the photographs with a panoramic or 4×5 camera using conventional film, and then stitched the images together digitally.
Born and raised in suburban Maryland, Ball received B.A. in art history at Stanford, a J.D. at Harvard Law School, and a Master of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Ball lives and works in Oakland, California. His work has been exhibited in San Francisco, Palo Alto and New York, and is in numerous private and corporate collections.