Alice Smeets
Alice Smeets (born July 5, 1987 in Eupen ) is a Belgian documentary photographer . In 2008 she won the international competition “UNICEF Photo of the Year”.
Life
Smeets attended school in Eupen and graduated from high school there in 2005. She discovered her interest in photography in 2006. After a year, she interrupted her photography studies, which she had started in Liège , to travel to Haiti for the first time and take photos there. After a workshop in New York , the Welsh photojournalist Philip Jones Griffiths , former president of the renowned Magnum Photos agency and best known for his Vietnam War photo reports, offered her a position as a personal assistant.
Smeets has been a member of the Belgian photographer collective Out of Focus since 2008 . Your pictures were u. a. shown at Photokina 2008 in Cologne and as projections at “Visa pour l'image” in Perpignan that same year . In 2008 Smeets visited Haiti again. With her pictures, Smeets wants to direct the viewer's gaze to the situation of people living in extreme poverty. In 2010 she completed her master's degree at the University of Arts, London .
On December 18, 2008 Alice Smeets won the international "UNICEF Photo of the Year" competition organized by UNICEF Germany . The award-winning photo shows a girl from Port-au-Prince , wearing a white dress and white bows in her braided hair, walking through ankle-deep puddles full of dirt and debris. Behind the child you can see two black pigs looking for food in the garbage. In the background you can see the rusty, crooked corrugated iron huts of the Cité Soleil slum . "The picture shows us the courage to live and the energy of a girl who grows up in the midst of misery," said Unicef patron Eva Luise Köhler at the award ceremony in Berlin.
At the age of 21, Alice Smeets is the youngest winner of the UNICEF photo competition, which has been advertised worldwide since 2000. A total of 1450 pictures from 128 photographers from 31 countries were submitted.
The girl in the photo survived the severe earthquake in Haiti in January 2010.
She is president of the Belgian non-profit association VIV TIMOUN, which initiates projects in Haiti. In 2011 Alice Smeets organized a photography workshop called "Eyes on Haiti" and, together with 5 other volunteer photographers, taught 20 young, adult Haitians the profession of photographer.
In 2014, together with cameraman Frederic Biegmann, she released a documentary called AIDependence, which reports on the negative influence of international aid organizations on the Haitian population and which premiered at the FIPA film festival in Biarritz .
In 2015 she created and published the artistic photo project “The Ghetto Tarot”, in which she recreated the scenes from traditional tarot cards in the Haitian slum. The photo series gained international attention, was exhibited in eight different countries and won the international competition "Sacred Fire Award of Gente di Fotografia" in the same year.
In 2016 the Lammerhuber publishing house published a book with the photo series “Ghetto Tarot”. This book won the international “One Eyeland Awards, Photobook of the Year 2016”. In the same year Alice Smeets won the “One Eyeland Awards, Photographer of the Year 2016”.
Furthermore, Alice Smeets is co-developer of the website “A Whole New High”, which aims to report on the positive effects of psychedelic substances. Together with Kerrie O'Reilly she organizes psilocybin retreats in the Netherlands.
Awards
- One Eyeland Awards, Photobook of the Year 2016
- One Eyeland Awards, Photographer of the Year 2016
- Sacred Fire Award of Gente di Fotografia, 2015
- 3rd prize, Multimedia Portfolio, Picture of the year international 2011
- UNICEF - Photo of the Year 2008
- Canon Profifoto Award 01/2008
- Finalist of the Inge Morath Award 2008
- Winner of the "Fondation belge da la Vocation" 4/2009 (social commitment of young people)
- Aachen newspaper duck of the district association Aachener Presse 2013
Exhibitions (selection)
- Ghetto Tarot, Solo Exhibition, Eupen Slaughterhouse. / Belgium, 2016
- GHETTO TAROT, Start Art Fair, London / UK (ARTCO Gallery), 2015
- GHETTO TAROT, Solo exhibition, ARTCO Gallery, Aachen / Germany, 2015
- Ghetto Tarot, Encontros da Imagem photo festival, Braga / Portugal, 2015
- Ghetto Tarot, Photoville festival, New York / USA Ghetto Tarot, Photofestival Leiden / Netherlands, 2015
- Ghetto Tarot projection, Angkor Watt Photofestival / Cambodia, 2015
- Ghetto Tarot, Photolux Festival, Lucca / Italy, 2015
- One Game - Everywhere, ARTCO Gallery, Aachen / Germany, 2014
- Premier of AIDEPENDENCE, official selection FIPA festival, Biarritz / France, 2014
- AIDependence, official selection film festival Docville, Louvain, Belgium, 2014
- AIDependence, official selection, international black film festival, Montreal / Canada, 2014
- Joburg Art Fair, Johannesburg / South Africa (ARTCO Gallery), 2013
- The Sour Taste of Sugar, ARTCO Gallery, Aachen / Germany, 2013
- Haiti, Galerie Verhaeren, Brussels / Belgium, 2012
- EUREGIO Photo Salon, Museum Zinkhütter Hof, Stolberg / Germany 2012
- Group exhibition "Here and Now", May 2011 in London
- “Die Nacht”, group exhibition by 7 artists in the TUFA, Trier. / Germany, January, February 2010
- “Haiti Chérie”, ARTCO Gallery, Herzogenrath, Germany, February 2010
- "One World - One Game", Joburg Art Fair, Johannesburg Art Fair, South Africa, ARTCO Gallery, March 2010
- You're right! Children have rights , Alice Smeets - Photography, Ludwig Forum for International Art (Aachen), Germany, 2009
- Growing up in Haiti . Visa pour l'Image, Perpignan , France 2008
- “Growing up in Haiti”. Exhibition in cooperation with Amnesty International in Hamburg, Germany December 2008
Web links
- Web presence of the artist
- Alice Smeets on 3sat.de , January 29, 2010.
- Alice Smeets on the development of her perception of development aid in Haiti , lecture in Eupen, December 17, 2015
Individual evidence
- ↑ website of the organization VIV Timoun
- ↑ Documentary AIDependence
- ↑ IM Award ( Memento from January 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Alice Smeets de Baelen reçoit un prix de la Fondation Belge de la Vocation ( Memento from June 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Smeets, Alice |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Belgian documentary photographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 5th July 1987 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Eupen |