George Robinson Fardon (1806-1886) with his series of albumenized salt paper prints in San Francisco Album. Photographs of the Most Beautiful Views and Public Buildings of San Francisco (1856-1857) has the distinction of creating the first album of photographs on an American city ever published.
 
Fardon arrived in San Francisco in 1856 and had a Daguerreian Studio at 203 Clay Street in 1859. The book Fardon, George Robinson. San Francisco Album: Photographs of the Most Beautiful Views and Public Buildings (San Francisco: Fraenkel Galleries, Hans P. Kraus, Jr. and Chronicle Books, 1999) includes a catalogue of the 65 known San Francisco views and their variants by Fardon. Although this is a small number of plates and only nine copies of the complete album are known the importance of a photographic series showing the urban development of an American city is difficult to over emphasize.
 
Fardon later moved to Victoria on Vancouver Island and became one of the earliest photographers on the West Coast of Canada. He first opened a studio at 68 Government Street and in 1864 moved to Langley Street. He died on 20th August 1886 and was buried at Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria.