Naples dedicates an exhibition to Raymond Cauchetier, photographer of the New Wave

From Sept. 14 to Oct. 15, 2022, Palazzo Grenoble in Naples is hosting the exhibition Raymond Cauchetier ’s La Nouvelle Vague, dedicated to one of the greatest stage photographers of the late 1950s, Raymond Cauchetier. ThePalatine Association is presenting an exhibition on the photographer for the first time in the Campania capital since his passing.

Born in Paris in 1920, Cauchetier signed the iconic shots of Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo on the Champs-Élysées in À bout de souffle or Jeanne Moreau’s laughter as she runs across the bridge in Jules et Jim. A scene photographer for Godard, Truffaut, Demy, Rozier and Chabrol, he knew best and first of all how to look at a new generation, capable of breaking into cinema and the collective imagination even today.

There is he in front of Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo coming down the Champs Elysées blowing up the patterns of the old cinema, he in front of Jeanne Moreau running forever free on the bridge with Jules and Jim, and it is thanks to him that we can see and see again the young Truffaut filming looking out a window. Raymond Cauchetier’s name has remained virtually unknown for decades, yet everyone knows his shots. A Parisian from the 12th arrondissement who died in February 2021 at age 101, he was the photographer of the New Wave. He made images that have become among the most iconic in film history. He became a set photographer by accident: he had been a partisan then enlisted in the French Air Force and sent to Indochina in 1951, where he was in charge of the news service. To illustrate a photo album intended for the military, he had bought and learned to use his first Rolleiflex camera.

Back in Paris he hoped to get a job at Paris Match, instead he found himself on the Champs Elysées in August 1959 alongside Jean-Luc Godard beginning the filming of À bout de souffle. He doesn’t say he learned photography by being a soldier, but he applies on the set what he used to do in war zones: hunt for images. Cauchetier stages the actors, spies on the directors, catches them writing a script at a café, shooting with the camera on their shoulder or hidden in a mail cart among passersby, captures them suggesting the dialogue of a scene, live. He observes them so well that he becomes a director himself: he creates photostories, writes scripts, directs actors, invents a new way of using lights, slamming flashes against walls and ceilings: “The directors of the Nouvelle Vague were inspired by it,” he observed, "and the critics, who didn’t even go near photostories by accident, cried stroke of genius....

Belmondo and Seberg walking down the Champs Elysées. Their walk, their smile that gave an era that wind of lightness, rebellion and freedom, we owe to Cauchetier. And through this retrospective we wish to pay homage to him.

For info: https://www.institutfrancais.it

Pictured is Jeanne Moreau running across the bridge with Jules et Jim.

Naples dedicates an exhibition to Raymond Cauchetier, photographer of the New Wave

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