Lise Sarfati began taking photographs in Nice, aged 15. She completed a degree in Russian studies, before becoming a full-time photographer in 1986, working for the Académie des Beaux-Arts and the French press. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Sarfati has spent much of her time working in Russia and has been awarded scholarships by the French Ministry of Culture (1995) and the Villa Médicis (1996) for her Russian project ‘Memory and Flight’.

In 1986 she won the Visa d'Or Kodak du Jeune Reporter and in 1996 she received both the I. C. P. Prize and the Infinity Award in Photojournalism from the International Center of Photography, New York. She lives in Paris.