Charles Kerry joined the studio of A.H. Lamartiniere in 1875 and after 1883 ran the firm as Lamartiniere & Kerry. He then operated a large commercial photographic firm under various forms of name: Charles H. Kerry (1884), Kerry & Jones (1886), Kerry & Co. (1893). He employed professional photographers and after 1895 took few photographs himself. He left the firm in 1911 to concentrate on his mining interests. From 1913 onwards he visited Tonga, Noumea, Fiji, New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Samoa, and photographs of these subjects are his own work. About 8000 glass negatives from his studio (including some negatives of Henry King which had been purchased by Kerry & Co.) were acquired in 1930 by Tyrell's Bookshop, and this collection was purchased by Australian Consolidated Press in 1980.