Alice Smeets: UNICEF Photo of the Year

Image © Alice Smeets-All Rights Reserved
It' always a pleasure to hear of young emerging photographers gaining awards and wide recognition for their work, and here's one who just did that.

The young Belgian photographer Alice Smeets won the international photo competition "UNICEF-Photo of the Year". Her winning picture is of a girl in the largest slum in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. Although this girl lives amidst mud, litter and refuse, she still wears a clean white dress with ribbons in her hair.

Alice is a freelance photographer based in Belgium, who says she seeks to document "the cruelties the human race has to deal with. I want to touch people’s feelings without shocking them to provoke a reaction as a result."

She won the Canon Profifoto Förderpreis 01/08, was finalist for the Inge Morath Award 08 and selected for the Eddie Adams Workshop XXI. Her images has been exhibited at the Photokina 08 in Cologne and projected at “Visa pour L’image” 08 in Perpignan.

Alice Smeets' website is HERE. Check her black & white work on Haiti's Saut D'eau.