George William Perry (1824–1900) was born in London and arrived in Victoria via South Africa around 1852. By 1856 he was working as a photographer in Collins Street, offering portraits using the daguerreotype, collodion (ambrotype) and paper processes. He also sold photographic equipment and offered tuition. Perry's studio on 'The Block' is said to have been one of the most fashionable in Melbourne. The hand-coloured daguerreotypes he exhibited in the 1856 Victorian Exhibition of Art were said by one observer to be 'so lifelike and highly finished that I question whether they could be surpassed'; and in 1858 he was awarded a certificate of merit for the ambrotypes he showed in the Victorian Industrial Society's exhibition. A number of his portraits of dignitaries such as Sir Charles Darling, Victoria's third Governor, were engraved by printmaker Henry Samuel Sadd. Around 1863 Perry moved to new premises on Elizabeth Street; portraits that he took there were shown in the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition in 1866. In 1864 he invented the Perry-o-Type process; and in 1867 he advertised that by way of his experiments in the chemistry of photography he had 'abolished torture' in the creation of portraits by doing away with the head-rest 'which is so universally objected to'. In 1872 he took telescopic pictures of the moon. Despite being prolific in output, Perry's studio was unable to survive the fallout of his heavy and ultimately disastrous investment in meat-preserving technology and the corresponding attempt to form a company specialising in preserved meat products. When he was declared insolvent in 1871, the studio and its contents – including some 14,000 glass plate negatives – was seized and put up for tender. Yet he eventually managed to rebuild his business, establishing the East End Portrait Gallery on Bourke Street which offered cartes de visite for 7 shillings and sixpence per dozen, as well as 'Solar Enlargements and other Photographs finished off in Oil or Watercolours'. Perry died at his home in Albert Park in August 1900, his death notice describing him as 'A colonist of 48 years.'
