Professional photographers have operated in Guernsey since the early days of the art, not many in the beginning had a permanent base in the island. This was due to the limited selling market as the costs for taking a Daguerreotype was very high and you had to be a high earner to afford a cased image.

Most photographers would have been French as Daguerre gave the process free to the nation while in England it was licenced and therefore the process was restricted. Arsene Garnier may have been the first truly successful photographer who permanently based in Guernsey, though there must have been others operating before him.

Though Talbot's invention, the calotype paper negatives and salt print positives were around at the same time in the 1840s and were certainly used in Guernsey, they could not match a Daguerreotype for fine detail, so most professionals used this process.

The mass market for professionals in Europe if you can call it such only started after Scott Archer invented the Collodion process in 1848 and published it in The Chemist in March 1851. The Collodion glass negative eventually gave a paper print with the detail of a daguerreotype but at a more reasonable cost. Most named cdv's in Guernsey are however from the 1860s.

The popularity of the Carte de Visite was then born, and a Gallery is dedicated to it here. Please see the CARTE DE VISITE heading for a more detailed history.

Shown in this PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS Gallery are the names and photographs of Professional photographers who the author can verify by having personally seen named images. Many photographs have no names on them and therefore cannot be attributed until evidence is found - In many cases, due to the scarcity of other examples this may never happen.

The shown list is far from complete and will be updated when the author when time permits, as there are many more examples to place online!