His photographs are an important record of the New Wave directors at the beginning of their careers, and of their unconventional and groundbreaking production methods.

[3] Cauchetier remained in the region after his service in the Air Force concluded, taking pictures of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

[3] Cauchetier met director Marcel Camus, who was in Cambodia to shoot the film Mort en fraude (Fugitive in Saigon), in 1957.

[5] Through Serra, Cauchetier became acquainted with Jean-Luc Godard, then working as a film critic and hoping to become a filmmaker himself.

[3] Other films Cauchetier worked on include Léon Morin, prêtre, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville,[6] and Jules et Jim (1962) by François Truffaut.

[3] Amendments to the copyright law of France in the mid-2000s granted photographers the rights to pictures they had captured as a paid employee.

Six years later, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosted an exhibition of his work in Los Angeles.