Born in Kent, Alfred Brothers moved to Manchester to work in insurance. By 1856, he had left his job to open a photographic portrait studio in Exchange Passage, off St. Ann’s Square, Manchester. The following year, he photographed the Manchester Art Treasures exhibition. He was awarded an Honourable Mention at the International Exhibition, or Great London Exposition held in 1862. He experimented with using magnesium as an artificial light source for photography around 1864. In December 1870 his photographs of the solar eclipse helped astronomers to better understand the sun’s corona.