Elena Ricci received honors for her fine art and editorial portfolios from New England School of Photography, and graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of New Orleans. She is a photographer, educator, and archaeologist with the National Park Service. Her photographic and research work has been featured, published, and presented in numerous literary reviews, magazines, and academic summits, and her images from select archaeological excavations are archived at the Library of Congress.

Elena’s photography is informed by her anthropological background- material culture, liminality, natural and human made environments, and identity all play significant roles in the conceptualization of her personal, collaborative, and commissioned projects. Her current client list includes Garden and Gun, New Orleans Magazine, A Studio in the Woods, New West Records, State Historic Preservation Office, and Preservation in Print. She has exhibited at Ogden Museum of Art, Louisiana State Museum, and Martine Chaisson Gallery. 

As an ongoing collaboration, Elena makes up one third of the female photo collective Southerly Gold. Most recently, Southerly Gold created an installation for the New Orleans Museum of Art which incorporated original photographs with found images and objects, audio recordings, and a public outreach component. Southerly Gold has exhibited in numerous shows and institutions including the Louisiana Contemporary exhibition at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The Grand Maltese Gallery, New Orleans Public Library, UNO St. Claude Gallery and in conjunction with PhotoNOLA. They are recipients of the 2016 Platforms Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation, and are former members of Good Children Gallery. 

Elena currently lives in Wonder Valley, California with her partner Dickie, their seventeen year old toothless dog named dog Toots, a perfectly mischievous orange tabby named Ed, and Chachi the fish.