Émile Gsell was a French photographer who worked in Southeast Asia, becoming the first commercial photographer based in Saigon. He participated in at least three scientific expeditions, and the images he produced from the first, to Angkor Wat, 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 and genre portraits.