Raymond Cauchetier was born on January 10, 1920 in Paris as the son of a piano teacher who raised the boy alone. He never knew his father, had no education beyond high school and kept the small hallway on the fifth floor where he was born for life.

It was near the Bois de Vincennes where a colonial exhibition opened in 1931 at the age of eleven. “Every evening I could see a faithful, brilliantly lit replica of the magnificent temple of Angkor Wat through the kitchen window,” he recalled. He dreamed of seeing Angkor Wat one day.

When the Germans invaded Paris in 1940, he fled by bicycle and joined the resistance. In the French Air Force he was used as a combat photographer in Vietnam after the war. In 1951 he bought a Rolleiflex, a camera popular with war correspondents, and used it for most of his life. General Charles de Gaulle awarded him the Legion of Honor for his battlefield work.

After the end of the war in 1954, Mr. Cauchetier stayed and photographed people and landscapes in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. His first photo book “Ciel de Guerre en Indochine” (“The Air War in Indochina”) sold 10,000 times. In 1956 the Smithsonian Institution organized an exhibition of his work “Faces of Vietnam” which was shown in museums and universities in the United States.

His childhood dream of visiting Angkor Wat was realized in 1957 when he created a collection of 3,000 photographs that critics consider priceless. It was handed over to Prime Minister Norodom Sihanouk and destroyed by the Khmer Rouge.

Back in Paris and unable to find work as a photojournalist, he was hired to take photos for Photo-Romans, a popular type of photo novel. He met Mr. Godard through a publisher and soon immersed himself in the New Wave. When he showed up, he and his Japanese wife Kaoru traveled widely photographing Romanesque sculptures in church settings. She survived him.