For 30 years, he was at the head of a group of photographers hunting for scoops. They made the covers of the world’s biggest magazines. Then the meticulous manager of Sygma’s interests was carried away, not by the revolution he had anticipated, but by his weakness. His strength is his work. “Henrotte,” as many called him, was a hard worker, making demands on himself and others. He was a leader of men, through example and rigor, not words. As as boss, he was what today we would call “old-school.” It was this quality that would, at the end of the 1990s, lead him astray. Faced with the considerable investments required for Sygma to pass into the digital era, he was unable to find the necessary support. Driven from “his” agency, he was sad to see Sygma weakened, sold off, dismembered and “trampled” by a giant from the world of computing and finance. When I met him at the Café des 3 Obus near the Sipa agency, the sole surviving agency of the era, he seemed a sad man. When I told him my intention to write a feature for the agency’s anniversary, he replied: “Sygma won’t celebrate its forty years!” Since I insisted, he agreed to respond to a few questions in writing. Michel

Puech Read the full article on the French version Le Journal de la Photographie 2013/05/14