Born in Lyon to a German family who fled to France in 1939, André Perlstein was separated from his parents at an early age due to the circumstances of the war and was hidden, along with his sister, by a Protestant family before being raised by a foster family. He became interested in photography in the early 1960s, and took up aerial photography after joining the air force. A meeting with Jean-Marie Cavada, gives him the opportunity to make many photos of stars. From 1967, he works for the Gamma Agency which has just been created by Gilles Caron and Raymond Depardon. In 1973, he was among the photographers who left Gamma to found the Sygma agency.