Although largely situated within the medium of photography, Daniel Ranalli's work can be characterized as conceptual and/or environmental. The work is often rooted in the balance between control and chance - such as the unforeseen results in an abstract photogram, the found scrawls on an unerased chalkboard or the "drawings" of a snail in wet sand.

Daniel Ranalli has been working as a visual artist for over 30 years. His work is in the permanent collections of over two dozen museums here and abroad including the Museum of Modern Art (NY), Museum of Fine Arts Boston, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and National Gallery of American Art (Smithsonian). He has been included in over 150 solo and group shows in the U.S. and abroad. He received a 2010 Artists Fellowship in drawing from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and has received several NEA and state arts council fellowships for his work in the past.

In 1993 Daniel Ranalli founded the Graduate Program in Arts Administration at Boston University where he continues to teach. He also wrote extensively on artist issues for several publications in the 1980s and 1990s. Daniel Ranalli lives in Cambridge and Wellfleet, Massachusetts with his wife the painter, Tabitha Vevers.