Maria J Hackett is a Brooklyn based artist. While heavily focused on her photography and dance throughout NYC, she recently completed her studies in photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Introduced to photography in her junior year at The High School of Fashion Industries, Maria continued on to a series of classes through The International Center of Photography’s Community Programs. Eventually, interning, and working as a teaching assistant for a number of classes through ICP followed after. Maria has also interned for Marco Grob, assisting on a number of shoots under Grob’s key assistant and studio manager, Grant Flanagan. She has also assisted a few classes under photography instructor Carol Dragon at the International Center of Photography Along with a deep passion for dance, she connects much of her work with dancers, as she maintains the goal of opening the eyes of viewers through many projects based on culture and community. One ongoing series, “Art Of Expression,” unites the many forms of dance into a single project that educates viewers on the styles of dance, ways of communication, self-expression, and the cultures that revolve around dance; it also aims to break stereotypes that exist about the unfamiliar. Opening the minds of viewers and exploring the unfamiliar are goals Maria seeks out to achieve as she continues to explore herself and others through both dance and photography.