A native of Paris, Lionel has been a photographer for over 20 years. He studied photography at I.C.P in NYC and began his career photographing car races for a Paris-based agency. He later lived and worked in Tokyo, London, Brussels, Barcelona, Nantes and Paris before moving to Beijing in 2005. His interest lies in stories with a strong humanitarian side: Dominique Lapierre hospital-boats in the Ganges delta or the training of elephant-keepers in Sri Lanka. He has been a Getty Images contributor since 2003.

Over the years his pictures have appeared in various magazines : The New-York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the National Geographic France, Fortune, l’Express, Paris-Match, Mother Jones, the Boston Globe, Okapi, Reader’s Digest, la Revista, Geo Lino, Saturday Express Magazine, Sunday Times Magazine as well as scores of French and European magazines.

On the corporate side he has worked for companies such as the Boston Consulting Group, l'Oreal, GKN, Meditechmedia, Siemens, les Armateurs de France, Shell, BP among others.