There is a widespread belief in particle physics that there is no relativis
tic description of a charged particle. This is claimed to be due to persist
ent, long range interactions which distort the incoming and outgoing plane
waves and generate infrared divergences. In this paper we will show that th
is is not the case in QED. We construct locally gauge invariant charged fie
lds which do create in and out Fock slates. In a companion paper we demonst
rate that the Green's functions of these fields have a good pole structure
describing particle propagation. (C) 2000 Academic Press.