Yucho Chow was born on June 3, 1876, in Hoy Ping (now known as Kaiping), Guangdong Province, China. He is believed to have immigrated to Canada in 1902, when he was forced to pay a head tax under the Chinese Immigration Act, totaled around one hundred dollars. Chow initially worked as a house servant, interpreter, and apprenticed under a photographer before opening his own photographic studio in Vancouver in 1906. The Yucho Chow Studio was initially located at 68 West Hastings. It moved to the top level of 5 West Pender St. in 1909, and then to a storefront on 23 Pender St. in 1914. In 1930 the studio moved again to 518 Main Street where it remained until Chow passed away in 1949. Chow's two sons Peter and Philip took over the business and moved the studio to 512 Main St. They continued to operate it until its closure in 1986. Chow's daughter, Jesse, also worked at the studio during its operation hand tinting photographs. During his lifetime Chow primarily photographed immigrant families, mixed race families, and Indigenous people in Vancouver who faced discrimination by many of the White photographers in the city. This included South Asian Canadians, Chinese Canadians, Japanese Canadians, Black and African Canadians, as well as European Canadians that faced religious, cultural, or linguistic prejudice such as Ukrainian Canadians, Italian Canadians and Czech Canadians. While Chow was primarily a commercial photographer, he also photographed a number of significant historical figures and events. He photographed Sun Yat-sen during his North American fundraising tour, the 1915 funeral procession for Sikh martyr Mewa Singh. Chow also frequently took photographs of new immigrants coming into Vancouver during the years of the Chinese Exclusion Act.