Born in Paris in 1959, Pierre Fernandez studied Mandarin at the University of Languages ​​and Civilization in Paris. He spent over a year in Taiwan at Shida National Taiwan Normal University for foreign students. Once back home he started to learn photography with his father, both a photographer and a documentary cameraman.

Fernandez started as a theatre photographer before joining the Army for nearly two years. He served as a military photographer between 1983 and 1984 and was assigned to Beirut as a war correspondent.

In 1985, when the global news agency AFP opened its world photo department, Fernandez was hired as a photo editor. In 1990 he was assigned to Saudi Arabia in Riyadh as a coordinator, until the fall of Kuwait City.

Sent to many international summits he was also assigned as a magazine editor to the Barcelona Summer Olympics, the World Cup Soccer in the US in 1994 and as a film editor to the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, the same year.

In 1994 he was appointed Head of Photo for Europe, Middle East and Africa and in 1997 he was appointed Editor-in-Chief.  He moved to the Communication department as Deputy Director, in charge of publishing and curating photo projects from 2003 to 2005 and became Deputy Director for Communication between 2005 and 2010.

He carried on as Deputy Director for Communication and the Brand from 2010 to 2016, before taking the new position of Multimedia Content Manager. He has been curating numerous exhibitions, among other things.