Louis-Auguste Bisson was an architect who worked for the city of Paris, while his younger brother Auguste-Rosalie worked for their father, who was a heraldic painter. The Bisson Frères learned the daguerreotype process directly from its inventor, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, and in 1840 established one of the earliest professional portrait studios in Paris. They remained faithful to the process until about 1853, when they began to use large-format glass negatives; they quickly mastered the process to become the leading architectural and landscape photographers of their day.