Vangelis Ioakimidis was born in Thessaloniki in 1962. After receiving an EOMMEX S.A. scholarship he studied Photography at University Paris VIII (Paris VIII, Etudes Cinematographiques et Audiovisuelles) at the department of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts. He attended post graduate studies on the Economy of Culture at the Leonard de Vinci-Nanterre University. He also holds a postgraduate degree on Cultural Studies and New Technologies from the Aegean University.

He has worked as a curator, production director and publishing director for the “Contrejour” publishing house (1985-1988), the international photography magazine “Camera Ιnternational” (1984-1994) and the “Photographies Magazine” (1989-1995), as a Paris-based publication.

After being appointed General Commissionaire of Greece by the Directorate of Fine Arts of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Ioakimidis organized a tribute dedicated to Greek photography from 1850 to the present (1997-1998) in the September of Photography in Nice. Between 2000-2005, he was the Director of the Skopelos Photography Center.

Following an invitation by the “Athens 2004” Organizing Committee Ioakimidis in 2004 took over as the curator of the photographic programme organized by the City Operations Directorate. Since September 2005 he has been the director of the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography. He has curated and edited more than two hundred exhibitions and publications in collaboration with institutions in Greece and abroad.