Pierre de Fenoÿl (1945-1987) devote his life to photography. He was successively a reporter, archivist, exhibition curator, gallery owner, art buyer and founder of the agency Vu (now Viva). In 1975, he became the first director of the Fondation Nationale de la Photographie then, in 1978, a photography advisor at the Centre Pompidou.

But Pierre de Fenoÿl is also the author of an extensive photographic work. His personal research has led him, first of to India, in the footsteps of Henri Cartier-Bresson, then to the United Sates and to Tuscany. He then embarked on a journey in Egypt following the routes of Maxime du Camp and Félix Teynard, before settling in southwest France in 1984 to devote himself to the observation of the landscape. En 1984, he participated in a grand project organised by the DATAR on the condition of French landscapes.

He died suddenly in 1987, without having the time to print, nor to show a major part of his images.