Ralli Ioanna (1960)

Born in Athens in 1960, from 1978 to 1980 she studied at the College for the Distributive Trades in London, and between 1980 and 1986 she attended Boston University and the New England School of Art and Design, graduating with a Bachelor degree in Communication and a Master’s in Graphic Design. Upon returning from America she worked as graphic designer for various magazines and taught at Southeastern University and Campus College in Athens. She presented her first solo exhibition of photography in Athens in 1988, at the Panorama Cultural Society. Involved also in singing, she was taught by Eugenia Syrioti and has performed with her in several concerts.
Her photographs, in colour or monochrome, are insights into figures, situations and events associated with her personal experiences, seen through a special relationship with man and his social environment. Her work is dominated by the human figure in various guises (portraits, nudes, scenes with children, aged faces, etc.), with frequent references to female nature (Archetypes of the Feminine, 2008), but there are also images of broader spaces and still life. She approaches her subjects with kindness, tenderness and respect but also with a critical mood that enhances their expressive tension. The real world is rendered poetically, sometimes lifelike and sometimes with an abstract aesthetic that underscores its visual qualities, while at times, especially in her mature work, she photographs forms of her own making. Her more recent photographs (Dreams and Symbols, 2016), inspired by the dreamy and symbolic world of the unconscious, depict her own constructions of thin paper, wire and aluminium foil over a backdrop painted by herself.
She has presented her work in ten solo exhibitions and in many group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. Her works can be found in private collections and museums.