Bio
Born in London and raised in Brussels, Giada Ripa graduated from Milan University with an M.A. in Political Science/ International Relations. She began her career as a photographer in 1999 after studying at ICP in New York.
Since then, Ripa has roamed the world, using its topographies as a backdrop for her examinations of personal dislocation in both public and private space. Ripa’s soft, neutral palette and voluminous, often ascending compositions, subtly contemplate artificial and organic landscapes around the globe. More concerned with forms and color than mere documentation, Ripa’s photographs render what we know as artificial, organic, and what we know as organic, artificial. Whether manmade, natural, governmental, commercial, industrial, or domestic, Ripa further investigates man’s perception of and relation to global spaces by inserting human subjects among these myriad landscapes. Ripa’s work is sometimes vaguely political, but not solely by their consistent contemplations of man’s complex interrelation with its physical spaces. Her work also generates a discourse regarding religion, gender, and environmental issues and their correlating impact on our psycho-physiological surroundings. Although Ripa tackles circuitous, and often contentious social matters, her oeuvre is always formally provocative, her palette always ethereal, and her compositions always sublime.
Based in New York for the past 8 years, Ripa has exhibited her work in NY, Brussels, Italy and China. She has worked as a correspondent photographer (Grazia Neri agency) for major Italian publications such as, Io Donna, Corrriere della Sera, D-Repubblica, Vanity Fair, Amica, Flair, Espresso, Class, il Sole 24, Luna, Vogue.
In 2000, Spazio San Carpoforo hosted her first solo show in Milan, curated by Turin photo Biennal director, Denis Curti. In 2002, Biz-Art in Shanghai and the Italian Institute of Beijing invited her to present her work in solo shows in both cities. Since then, Ripa has shot a number of projects in Central and South East Asia, which focus on three religious minority groups: The Muslims of China, “the Mountain Jews” of Azerbaijan, and the Christian Russian Molokans of the Caucasus. These projects enabled Ripa to adroitly combine her political and artistic training into a powerful, moving body of work.
In May, 2003, Ripa’s work was published in a book entitled, Imagining Ourselves: Voices of a New Generation of Women, which was orchestrated by the International Museum of Women of San Francisco. She is currently finishing a book project called In Transit, compiling the images of her personal work and is collaborating and teaching photography at the Domus Academy in Milan and at ICP in New York.