Maya Barkai is a New York City–based photographer with a focus on still life, product, and food photography. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts, she loves using light, color, and texture to bring everyday objects to life in fresh and unexpected ways.
She teaches Still Life and Food Photography as part of the faculty at the International Center of Photography, where she enjoys mentoring students as they experiment with techniques and shape their unique vision.
Maya works both in the studio and on location, handling everything from the initial concept to the final edits, and she often takes on the styling herself.
She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two kids.
Her public art project Walking Men Worldwide™ , is a series of installations that originated with Walking Men 99™ in Downtown Manhattan in 2010. Over the next decade, Walking Men expanded to include projects in collaboration with the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art in Russia, the City of Sydney, the city of Buenos Aires, and the Fubon Art Foundation in Taipei. Her follow up project Men At Work was featured at the Bat-Yam International Biennial in Israel, and Men At Work NYC, which wrapped around the construction site of 4 World Trade Center and was selected for the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network 2013 Year in Review. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NY Daily News, and The Telegraph.
She is the recipient of the National Press Photographers Foundation Grant for her photojournalism work. Her images were included in the Sony World Photography Awards, Quest and W Magazines, the Tel Aviv Museum, and the George Eastman House Photography Museum.
