Few women’s names are found among the list of photography’s early pioneers. Although they are largely absent from art history text books, a significant number of women photographers from the Victorian and Edwardian periods were acclaimed in their day. The first women commercial photographers were concentrated in northern Europe with studios in France, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden as early as the 1840s. In England, women from aristocratic families began using the photographic medium as an art form in the 1850s. Perhaps because their works were not as well-kept as their male contemporaries, people today do not often find their work displayed in museums and books. Eventually, the cycle of not looking for them and not knowing to look for them rendered these photographers nearly invisible. The photographs below depict early women photographers with the tools of their trade. We may never be able to connect their faces to their work, but these photographs serve as evidence that they were here.