[1] Aguado was born in Paris in 1827, the second son of the 1st Marquess of Marismas del Guadalquivir (1784–1842) and Maria de Carmen Vidoire Moreno.

From his studio on the Place Vendôme, he initially worked with daguerreotypes, but by the early 1850s, was already experimenting with other photographic processes, namely with negative paper and collodion on glass.

[1] In 1854, he and Edouard Delessert developed the carte-de-visite printing method as a way to add portraits to visiting cards (the process was patented by Eugène Disderi later that year).

[8][9] Aguado's photographs during this period included a number of staged portraits that poked fun at the mores and habits of Second Empire nobility.

Salt paper prints by Aguado include Still Life with Garden Equipment (1855) and Study of Trees, Bois de Boulogne (1855).

[1] Some of Aguado's most interesting images consist of a series of staged family portraits, or "living pictures," taken in the 1860s as an apparent critique of Second Empire nobility.