As a child she already had the chance to take photographs by her own camera. She learnt to photograph from her father, Demeter Balla. It was not the technique in the first place that she learnt from him but the importance of light and composition. She has been living in Australia since 1980. As a student of Canberra School of Art she studied photography, textile design and art history, she graduated with a B.A. in 1987. She continued her photographic studies at the Australia Centre of Photography, the University of Technology (Sydney) and the University of Western Sydney and started to take fashion photographs. Her picture were published in the biggest Australian fashion magazines, she made television commercials.

Her art pictures from the beginning of the 1990s are apparently influenced by the art and art theory of the 30s. In 1995 she won the b&w competition of Polaroid and collected a prize of a two-day shoot at Polaroid's 20"x24" studio in New York. With the work made here, she confirmed her status as one of the leading creative photographers working in Australia.