Oliver Schwabe was born in Hanover in 1966. After becoming a photographer, he studied in Cologne and New York. With his video installation "Verstaerker" (1999), he represented the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) at the ICC in Tokyo. He served as director of photography for Jan Hendrik Krueger’s "Freunde" ("The Whiz Kids", 2001), which won the Silver Lion for Best Short in Venice in 2001.

Over the next few years he realised several TV documentaries, mainly on pop cultural topics: "Jürgen Roland Reloaded" (2005), "My Generation - Der Sound der Revolte erzählt in 15 Songs" (2006), "Disco Love Machine - Im Beat liegt die Sehnsucht" (2007) and "STARDUST - Von der Leidenschaft ein Star zu sein" (2008). In 2007, together with Christian Becker, he founded the production company field recordings filmproduktion, which specializes in documentary films.  

Schwabe and Becker co-directed his second feature film "Zarte Parasiten" ("Tender Parasites") in 2008, starring Robert Stadlober and Maja Schöne. The drama about a young couple who make a living as ‘human service providers’ celebrated its world premiere in 2009 at the Venice International Film Festival. Despite this success, Schwabe again focused only on TV projects for the next few years, realising numerous documentaries, such as "Rote Rosen - Alltag einer Telenovela" (2013), "Freddy Quinn und die ewige Sehnsucht" (2014) and "Die Höhle von Eppendorf - Das legendäre Onkel Pö" ("Eppendorf's Cavern - The Legendary Onkel Pö", 2016), to name just a few. His documentary "Keine Atempause - Düsseldorf, der Ratinger Hof und die neue Musik" was nominated for the Pop Culture Award in 2016.  

In addition to his own projects, Schwabe continued to work as a cameraman for other directors, for example for Ingo Haeb's "Sohnemänner" (2011), Lars Jessens Mockumentary "Fraktus" (2012) and Peter Scharfs' documentary "Was bin ich wert?" ("The Price of My Life", 2013). In 2016 he was responsible for the camera concept of "Wellness für Paare" (Director: Jan Schütte), which was improvised and filmed with 20 cameras. "Klassentreffen" was created in 2017 under the same conditions, also directed by Jan Schütte.  

Oliver Schwabe produced the documentary "Tokio Hotel - Hinter die Welt" ("Tokio Hotel: Beyond the World"), which premiered at the Cologne Film Festival in 2017. One year later his documentary "Asi mit Niwoh - die Jürgen Zeltinger Geschichte" (2018), a portrait of the Cologne cult musician, premiered at the same festival. Also in 2018, his TV documentary "EXODUS - Berichte von vier unbegleiteten minderjährigen Flüchtlingen" received a nomination for the German Human Rights Film Award.