Thierry Maindrault’s Monthly Cogitations
As I pick up my pen to tackle this column, which has become a regular feature in your magazine, it is February 9, 2026. Instinctively, two news items for my ramblings settle in my little gray cells (so essential to Agatha Christie and her Hercule Poirot): the grand departure of Jean-Jacques Naudet and the first photographic image by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. Don’t think that these two events are unrelated, just because two centuries separate them.
My first personal telephone conversation with Jean-Jacques dates back to about ten years ago. This man, omnipresent in American photography circles, remained a key figure in this photographic nebula since his return to Europe. Our first physical meeting took place in Provence in the “mas” he had rented. The foundation of our relationship was laid. His anecdotes against my projects, the mutual attraction was complete. It was this extraordinary character who, from our second meeting (under the same conditions, with a glass of Vacqueyras in hand), decided, negotiated, and finally imposed on me (just as a trial, he insisted!) the writing of this monthly column. I won’t bore you with his arguments, each more colorful than the last, put forward by this seasoned and stubborn editor-in-chief. It was with the arrival of COVID, which had just taken over the news, that my first column appeared and, unfortunately for my future schedule, was an immediate success. Jean Jacques, with his journalistic and event-driven flair, had just won one more editorial bet.
We shared a refusal to be put in the spotlight unless it was to highlight a cause or a challenge. So I won’t dwell any further on the intuitive friendship we shared. You know my keen interest for artwork item (especially photography), so I suggest we take a few lines to focus on the work of this photography enthusiast.
To give you a clearer picture, Jean-Jacques, the representative in America of Paris Match and creator of PHOTO magazine, boasted that he had never taken a photograph in his life. He claimed to understand nothing about photographic technique, regardless of the technology used. Given his total ignorance of silver salts and computer pixels, I shall leave you to imagine what it was like when it came to collodion, gum, bitumen, or cyanide. It was the same for the physical aspects of image production. I tried several times to offer modest information, without success. This seems unthinkable when you consider the list of our colleagues (women and men) who sat in his office (including the annex) or raised a glass in his apartment.
And yet, this man did more for photography and photographers during his lifetime than most of us, if not all of us. I insist on this reality that defending and disseminating an artwork sometimes does more than its creation and realization. Evoking Jean-Jacques Naudet is a timely opportunity to salute all of the sincere admirers, non-photographers, who through their passion contribute, individually and collectively, more to photography than many of our colleagues who are wrapped up on their navel. If photography is now considered one of the major arts (another strange qualification!), it is because the re are people who contemplate our work.
So, at the start of this bicentennial of photography, I have given priority to the apostles who valorized our vision rather than to the masters who domesticate the technique adding this little creative extra that makes the difference.
As I write these few lines, time reminds us that exactly two hundred years ago, it was the first time (defined and contested as such) that light very, very slowly recorded an image on a photosensitive plate (a tin-plate covered with Judea bitumen). We will quickly gloss over the – supposed and probable – earlier achievements mentioned by the inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niepce, which are certainly true. But, without conclusive evidence, we will neglect the still life to admire the proof with the window open to the future. It was a great first: Man froze Time with the random complicity of Light. Randomness is not an empty word; all photographers know something about it.
Photography was born!
There is nothing particularly extraordinary about these numerous and varied combinations of technologies, which allow us to freeze what we see before our eyes on a physical medium that enables us to revisit the past. Let’s be honest, in reality, it’s just a matter of reconstructing in our minds a vision of something we have already seen or can imagine through deduction. Based on this observation, anything is possible. Increasingly sophisticated physical and chemical combinations have multiplied and intertwined to such an extent that the results are constantly improving. In fact, they have not yet finished benefiting from this escalation of potential. That is what photography is all about.
As is often the case in the creative arts, the results obtained from a process take its name. The word “photography” is no exception to this logic and encompasses all images obtained by the process. Thus, the impact of images has given photography its letters of nobility. Moreover, the photographic image has become indispensable in all areas of human activity, even the most incongruous. The icing on the cake is that the creativity of a few operators (in all sectors) has transcended and continues to transcend the interpretation of their images for many viewers.
The moment the picture is taken becomes magical when the photographer is already in the minds of future viewers. The interpretations of a photograph are superb when the brain of viewers is imbued by the spirit of the photographer’s message.
The inventor Nicéphore and the curious aesthete Jean-Jacques, at opposite ends of the photography technic, but both visionaries, understood this well. Here they are, both with amused, slightly mocking eyes, one in the photographers’ paradise, the other on his way to the journalists’ paradise, on an avenue lined, I hope, by an hedge of photographers.
Farewell, my friend. You wanted a photographer-chronicler, and you got one!
Thierry Maindrault, February 13, 2026
your comments about this chronicle and its photography are always welcome at
