Olivier Papegnies was born in Belgium on May 4th, 1970. He became an independent press photographer in 1997. After advanced studies of photography, he worked for three years for daily papers, as well as for Belga and Reuters agencies, dealing with his country's current events.

In 2000, he rejoined the Taïga press agency team in Paris as a press photographer, and for four years worked in more than 40 countries to produce reports on current events, on society, on escape, which will be published in several international magazines. In order to comply with the requests of some companies, he was sent in Siberia by the agency for realizing a photo report on Total Fina Elf refineries. Other ones will also call on his services for their brand image, such as the SNIM "Société Nationale des Industries Minières" in Mauritania, Havana Club, Virgin Express…

In 2001, as a continuation of a work on Tibetan exile, he brought out a book headed : "Tibétains, de Lhassa à Dharamsala". He also organized exhibitions of his work at the Photography Museum of Charleroi, and also in several Art Galleries in Brussels. The same year, he received the Special Prize of the Jury at the International Festival of Scoop and Journalism of Angers in France for his work on the victims of "Agent Orange" in Vietnam, called : "Apocalypse Children".

In 2003, he collaborated with the Belgian ONG "Education Sans Frontières", based in Burkina Faso, of which he became the photographer, further to his activity at the Taïga Agency. The same year, the JAI group "Jeune Afrique International" calls him for the realization of several subjects in West Africa.

In 2004, he shifted to another agency and rejoined the Nazca Pictures Press Agency team, based at Florence in Italy, where, up to now, he goes on working on current events in Belgium as well as in foreign countries. He uses the rest of his time to complete his author works. More particularly, he follows up with much emotion the evolution of leukemic children, and takes part to the elaboration of a book devoted to them : "Demain, j'irai mieux", at Robert Laffont Editions.

In January 2005, a few days before the Tsunami, he goes to Sri Lanka and uses this journey to discover the Veddas, a tribe descending from aboriginals living in autarky. After that, he follows the Belgian archaeologist Peter Eeckhout and his team on the Pachacamac site in Peru, as part of Ydhsma project.

In 2006, he goes to Ukraine for the 20 years of Tchernobyl catastrophy. Some months later, he decides to go back to Vietnam to find a trace of the families victims of the "Agent Orange", already met six years before.

In 2007, he goes to the United States in order to meet American veterans and to collect their testimonies on the Vietnam war. He actually works on the life of the mentally handicapped through the sport, subject who will publish in june 2008.

His aim is also to offer his photographic experience to the companies anxious to improve their brand image in a more visual way, and willing to bring to their clients a different and innovating look on their products.

His photos have been published in various magazines such as The Time Magazine, Oggi, Géo, Voyager, Gulliver, L'Intelligent, Paris Match, Le Vif L'express, Ma Santé, Le Soir Magazine, Plus Magazine, De Standaard, Victor, Imagine Magazine…