In 1954, just when I’d been promoted to the rank of capitaine after Dien Bien Phu, I left the army. The war was over. I stayed in Indochina and tried to embark on a career as a photographer. I knew a little about photography itself, but nothing about the world of photography. At the beginning, though, things went well. My first album, Ciel de Guerre en Indochine, was very successful. The 10,000 copies printed were all sold on subscription, and all the royalties went to Air Force charities. Also, to my great surprise, the Japanese, who had just discovered my photos of Saigon, hailed me as one of the greatest photographers of the time. The magazine Asahi Camera gave me sixteen pages. One of the top American museums, the Smithsonian Institution, organized an exhibition of my photos of Vietnam, Faces of Viet Nam, which travelled around the States for several years.
came back to Paris full of hope. I dreamed of working for Paris-Match and of learning my new profession at last. I managed to get an interview and arrived with my published albums and a selection of my best photos. The editor rejected them disdainfully. “Nowadays, Monsieur, everyone takes good photos. The only thing that matters is who recommended you!” I wasn’t recommendable, so I left.
And yet I wasn’t forgotten in Japan. When he came to Paris, the most famous Japanese photographer, Ihei Kimura, mentioned me to Henri Cartier-Bresson, who suggested I work for Magnum. I was just about to leave for Indochina again, and gladly agreed.
I arrived in Saigon during the elections. The Americans were plotting to make sure their favourite, Ngo Dinh Diem, would replace Emperor Bao Dai, who was too favourable to France. My photos show the various phases of the campaign, which was violent and pitiless. I sent them to Magnum straight away, but received no answer. A little disappointed, I left Saigon and went to Cambodia, where the Angkor temples still awaited me.
It was only much later that I found out why my photos did not find favour with Magnum. It wasn’t because they weren’t good enough, but because they had been taken with my old 6X6 cm Rollei, whereas the Magnum lab, sponsored by Leica, was only equipped to process 24×36 mm photos. They were eventually published, but I was kindly but firmly urged to get a new camera. I refused, and that’s why I only really worked for Magnum for a day.
So I went back to work in Angkor. That’s where, in 1956, I got a telegram from the producer Jean-Paul Guibert, who asked me to take photos for the film Mort en Fraude, which Marcel Camus was about to make in Indochina based on a book by my friend Jean Hougron. It wasn’t because I was (possibly) talented, but because it was cheaper than bringing over a photographer from Paris.
That’s how I started working in film, little knowing that I would later, in my own way, illustrate the revolution of New Wave cinema.
At the time, set photographers were technicians with ill-defined jobs. They were mostly asked to take a photo from the spot where the movie camera was standing at the end of a scene, and then to make themselves scarce. They got in everyone’s way and cost the producers money as every minute had to be used profitably. Their role as button-pushers brought them a meagre salary that was aligned with that of junior machine operators. Besides, nobody really knew what to do with the photos, which only really interested the script girl trying to get the continuity right.
But that was when Jean-Luc Godard appeared, beginning to film Breathless. The wind of change was starting to blow in the world of cinema. The producer was indignant when he saw Godard writing dialogues in a café and sending the film crew home because he didn’t have any ideas that morning. The sacrosanct rules of traditional cinema had been thrown out of the window.
I covered this upheaval from day to day, but I was careful not to talk about how successful my work had been in Indochina. I still had everything to learn about the world of film, where I was still unknown. Besides which, I bothered people. I was severely criticized for my initiatives and my ‘reporter’ style that was so far removed from standard set photography. One day, in 1961, they stopped using me to please a cameraman who was eager to give the job to one of his friends. Nobody’s perfect.
As for my pictures, which belonged to the production company, they stayed in boxes for fifty years. When they’d finished filming Breathless, Jean Seberg introduced me to Romain Gary. We got on really well and talked a little about film and books, but a lot about aviation. He had been in the Air Force in the Middle East, as I had in the Far East. We would often compare the attractions and dangers of our respective air missions.
But I had to get another job. I offered my services to François Truffaut, who welcomed me with open arms. I took part in the filming of some unforgettable films. But the set photographer’s salary was set by the trade unions and remained as low as ever, and I became tired of this and ended up leaving the cinema world altogether.
The publisher Dargaud gave me what seemed like a golden handshake after the paltry salaries in film: they asked me to edit a series of photonovels – a format that was very popular at the time. I learned the technique from Hubert Serra, one of the people who created the genre in France. I was thrilled: I could write the storyboards, select and direct the actors, and do the lighting for the shots myself. I adapted Balzac, Maupassant, Zola and Chekhov. It was like film, except that there were no movie cameras or sound engineers. Instead of spotlights, we had flashes bouncing off walls. This lighting method was used faithfully in the New Wave films, and the critics, who had never opened a photonovel in their lives, proclaimed it as a stroke of genius.
Within a few years I was back on an even keel financially, until Dargaud sold the thriving magazine to a greedy Belgian publishing house, which ruined its distribution and killed it off within a few months.
There was nothing to keep me in France any more. In 1967 I was able to go back to Indochina, where Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia, who loved the photos in my Saigon album, asked me to take photographs of his country as part of a tourist promotion. I was given everything I needed: cars, planes, helicopters. It was like a dream! For two months I travelled the length and breadth of Cambodia, without a single day’s rest. I was a little worried, because I had never taken on such responsibilities before. But when the King saw my work he loved it, decorated me with one of the highest Khmer honours, and asked me to set up a National School of Photography in Cambodia.