about

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Currently based in the United States’ Blue Ridge Mountains, she carries her camera, and her passion for dance, percussion, Mother Nature, art and food with her wherever she goes. In  her creative projects, she has created and collaborated in developing photographic projects, interventions, performances, and installations that illuminate alternative possibilities to the limitations placed on so many of us based on socio-economic class, race, ethnicity, nationality, immigration status and gender & sexual identity.

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Since the experience of being photographed is not exactly natural, most people feel at least somewhat camera shy if not terrified of a lens before them. From Rayya’s perspective during a private photo shoot, that automatically creates an intimate experience between the two parties, hence the name Intimacy Photography. Still, today with head-shots and various sorts of portraiture in her repertoire her commercial photography work is moving towards physical intimacy which includes nudes in nature, boudoir, an individual or couple's photo session. These are all quite the intimate emotional experiences between the photographer and the person on the other side of the camera, where a collaboration of sorts is taking place. She does not see the person being photographed merely as a subject. The experience is happening in both directions.

She has also photographed products ranging from jewelry to the culinary arts; music, dance and performance art, as well as other events. Rayya is a native speaker of Arabic, English and also fluently speaks French as she is still improving her Spanish. She studied sociology at Loyola University New Orleans before receiving a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. She more recently received an Association Montessori International (AMI) teaching certification from the MIP in Prague, Czech Republic.