Alice Smeets is a Belgian photographer, filmmaker, artist and teacher. Her documentary photographs from Haiti are fairly well known and have won her several awards including the Unicef Photo of the Year Award 2008.

For a long time, she wanted to interpret the Tarot Deck with her photos, but taking ordinary pictures of the scenes seemed too simple. Her aim was to create a very personal deck without loosing the different spirits of the cards. Then the idea entered her mind to combine three of her passions: the spiritual world, the Haitian culture and people as well as the philosophical reflections about the dualities in our world; in this case rich and poor.

Since 2007 she has been a regular visitor to Haiti and has lived in the country for 2 years. Its complexity and spirituality have played a big role in her life. The observations of the Haitian society have brought answers to many of her questions.

So taking the tarot pictures in the ghetto of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince was the obvious choice to create a very personal deck: moving away from the cliched images of poverty, illustrating the spirits and meanings of the cards with a touch of humor in the middle of the slum and showing colored people on the traditional, old European cards to break stereotypes.

All the artists of the group ATIS REZISTANS grew up in downtown Port-au-Prince, in an atmosphere of junkyard make-do, survivalist recycling and artistic endeavour. Their powerful sculptural collages of engine manifolds, TV sets, wheel hubcaps and discarded lumber have transformed the detritus of a failing economy into bold, radical and warped sculptures.

Alice had known the group of artists “Atiz Rezistans” for a long time and desired to work together with the group. They immediately jumped on board to create the Ghetto Tarot deck together. Being very spiritual themselves and working a lot with voodoo symbolism, they immediately understood the spirits of the cards.

The photo scenes were created by Alice, putting the models into place. The artists allowed Alice to place their art pieces into the photos. Moreover, Atis Rezistans were very helpful to find the materials needed and often created them on the spot, like the lantern for the Hermit that is created out of a old metal can or the black cat for the Queen of Wands and the animals on the Moon that are made out of used car tires. One of the artists called Claudel Casseus was Alice’s personal assistant and did an amazing job.