Emile Gsell was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 photographer

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

 who worked in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...

, becoming the first commercial photographer based in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City , formerly named Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam...

). He participated in at least three scientific expeditions, and the images he produced from the first, to Angkor

Angkor

Angkor is a region of Cambodia that served as the seat of the Khmer Empire, which flourished from approximately the 9th to 15th centuries. The word Angkor is derived from the Sanskrit nagara , meaning "city"...

, are amongst the earliest photographs of that site. Though he died at an early age he managed to make several hundred photographs in just over a dozen years featuring a wide range of subject matter including architecture, landscapes, and studio, ethnographic

Ethnography

Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

 and genre portraits.

Gsell was born in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines

Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines

Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines is a commune in the Haut-Rhin department in Alsace in north-eastern France.-Geography:Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines nestles in the massif of the Vosges Mountains, where it occupies the beautiful V-shaped valley of the Lièpvrette...

, Haut-Rhin

Haut-Rhin

Haut-Rhin is a département of the Alsace region of France, named after the Rhine river. Its name means Upper Rhine. Haut-Rhin is the smaller and less populated of the two departements of Alsace, although is still densely populated compared to the rest of France.-Subdivisions:The department...

, France on 31 December 1838. He served in the military from 1858 to 1866, during which time he learned photography and travelled to Cochin China (now Southern Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

).

In Cochin China, Gsell was hired by the Commission d'exploration du Mékong, directed by Ernest Doudart de Lagrée

Ernest Doudart de Lagrée

Ernest Marc Louis de Gonzague Doudart de Lagrée was the leader of the French Mekong Expedition of 1866-1868.He was born in Saint-Vincent-de-Mercuze near Grenoble, France, and graduated from the École Polytechnique...

 (b. 1823 - d. 1868), to photograph the ruins of Angkor. Gsell accompanied the expedition to Cambodia

Cambodia

Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...

 and Siam (now Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

, and at the time in possession of Angkor) from June to September or October 1866, often receiving suggestions for photographic points of view from Doudart de Lagrée.

Also in 1866, following the expedition, Gsell established himself as a commercial photographer in Saigon, becoming the first professional photographer to do so in that city.

In the first half of 1873 Gsell returned to Angkor and travelled through Cambodia with Louis Delaporte

Louis Delaporte

Louis Delaporte was a French explorer and artist, whose collection and documentation of Khmer art formed the nucleus of exhibitions in Paris, originally at the 1878 Paris Exposition and later at the Palais du Trocadéro, where he became chief curator of the Musée Indochinois...

. On the strength of his Cambodian photographs Gsell was awarded a medal of merit at the Vienna International Exhibition

Weltausstellung 1873 Wien

]The Weltausstellung 1873 Wien was the large World exposition was held in 1873 in the Austria–Hungarian capital of Vienna. Its motto was Kultur und Erziehung ....

, which was held from 1 May to the 31 October 1873 and during which Gsell exhibited two albums of photographs, one of the ruins of Angkor and the other of "the mores, customs, and types of the Annamite and Cambodian populations".

In April 1875, Gsell accompanied a mission, led by Brossard de Corbigny, to Huế

Hue

Hue is one of the main properties of a color, defined technically , as "the degree to which a stimulus can be describedas similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, green, blue, and yellow,"...

, though he was not allowed to photograph the people he met nor the Citadel. However, two of his photographs demonstrate that he was in Hanoi

Hanoi

Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...

 at the end of 1875 and from November 1876 to January 1877 Gsell was able to take many views of Tonkin

Tonkin

Tonkin , also spelled Tongkin, Tonquin or Tongking, is the northernmost part of Vietnam, south of China's Yunnan and Guangxi Provinces, east of northern Laos, and west of the Gulf of Tonkin. Locally, it is known as Bắc Kỳ, meaning "Northern Region"...

 (now Northern Vietnam).

Gsell's photographs were marketed by Auguste Nicolier, who sold chemicals and photographic supplies in Saigon from 1876.

Emile Gsell died at home in Saigon on 16 October 1879. After his death, O. Wegener succeeded Gsell, obtaining and using his stock in the early 1880s then passing it on to Vidal (also known as Salin-Vidal) who marketed it under the names Vidal and Salin-Vidal until his own death in 1883.