During WWII, he escaped Paris on a bicycle and joined the air force.
He was a photographer who started out in the early 1950s, working for the French air force in Indochina. He rose to prominence taking pictures on the sets of "Breathless," "Jules and Jim" and other landmarks of French New Wave cinema.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosted in 2013 an exhibition of his work in Los Angeles.
Cauchetier stopped working as a set photographer in 1968 due to the job's low pay. He continued publishing photographs, but his images from the New Wave are considered by critics to be his best work.
A 2009 profile of Cauchetier in Aperture magazine declared that his photographs "are themselves central works of the New Wave.".