Hocquard was a French military doctor and amateur photographer born in Saint- Nicolas-de-Port, northeastern France in 1853. Although he did not operate a commercial studio, the quality of the work he produced ensured his legacy as one of the finest of the early photographers in Vietnam.

He was the son of Pierre-Édouard Hocquard, a tanner, and Marie Dumange. He studied medicine at the military hospital Val-de-Grâce in Paris, qualifying on 30 December 1875. He was then attached to the 16th regiment of Horse in January 1878, then the 99th infantry regiment at Lyon. In 1882 he moved to the thermal hospital at Bourbonne-les- Bains. By this time he had developed a passion for photography and had contributed in 1881 to a medical paper entitled Iconographie photographique appliquée à l’ophtalmologie (Photographic Iconography Applied to Ophthalmology).

He volunteered to join the French expedition to Tonkin under the command of General Millot and was accepted as a medical doctor of the second class with the rank of major. He was also nominated as the official photographer, travelling in the company of the official artist Gaston Roullet (1847–1925). He left the port of Toulon on 11 January 1884 on board the government transport ship Annamite and arrived in the Gulf of Tonkin on 15 February.

At this time France sought control over the whole of Vietnam, and to achieve this needed to break the hold that China held over the north of the country. A war between China and France broke out on 11 May 1884 and continued until a treaty was signed on 9 June 1885, when control of Annam and Tonkin was ceded to the French. In January or February 1885 Hocquard was allowed to photograph Emperor Dong Khanh. This occasion appears to be the first time that a Vietnamese emperor had sat before a camera, or at least a foreign one.

Hocquard exhibited nine albums of photographs at the Antwerp Universal Exhibition in 1885 and was awarded the gold medal. On 25 July 1885 the Hanoi newspaper l’Avenir du Tonkin announced the sale of an album of Tonkin views edited by Henri Cremnitz. Hocquard's work appears in albumen print and woodburytype formats. The newspaper did not make clear which type was being offered.