Roberta Orio was born in Venice. Thanks to her father’s profession, from a very young age she was surrounded by the world of design and learned its value.
From 1988 to 1990 she attended the AG Fronzoni graphic and design school in via Solferino in Milan, where she continued to follow the maestro until his death in 2002. It was in this period in the energetic Milanese circles that she met Bruno Munari, Achille Castiglioni and Renzo Piano. In 1988 she was admitted to the ex Umanitaria, Instituto Bauer School of Photography thanks to her earlier studies with Roberto Salbitani, who taught her the printing methods from the nineteenth century until today. It was there that she met the professor of Photographic Language, the critic Roberta Valtorta, with whom she established a long-standing and close relationship and who still follows her research projects today.
From 1988 to 2000 she was part of the animated scene of Italian photography in Milan where she struck up friendships and cultural exchanges with some of the most important Italian photographers such as Gabriele Basilico, Gianni Berengo Gardin, Franco Vaccari, Vittore Fossati, Martino Marangoni and Alessandra Capodacqua with the Florentine school of photography; she met and talked with critics such as Giovanna Calvenzi, Laura Leonelli, and Teresa Macrì. It was in this context that she developed her own language, which found expression not only in both public and private roles but also in research projects. She took part in numerous collective exhibitions and solo shows. In 2000 she met Luca Massimo Barbero with whom she met diverse artists, before going on to start work on the origins and development of artistic creation. This not only led to the commission on Mauro Staccioli’s work, but also to one of her most important projects on Cristiano Bianchin’s work, which she photographed on numerous occasions.
In Venice during the same period she worked together with some of the city’s most important cultural institutions such as Fondazione Querini Stampalia (director Giorgio Busetto and Chiara Bertola for contemporary art curator), Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa (director Luca Massimo Barbero followed by Angela Vettese).