Haiti is a troubled nation, and it has been that way for a good long while. The country always makes it onto lists of places you should never visit. If you live there, however, you don’t have a whole lot of choice. Alice Smeet, a Belgian photographer and documentary maker, has been working in Haiti since 2007 in an attempt to make some kind of a difference to those struggling through life there.

Images VIA

Smeet says she got the random idea to replicate old tarot card art with live subjects when she’d gotten disheartened with her documentary work. Turning tarot cards into ghetto versions is a pretty random idea, but it works a treat for some reason. Smeet, Belgian by birth, clubbed together with other frontline local artists in Haiti and off they trotted.

The word ‘ghetto’ in Haiti has different connotations to ‘ghetto’ in the West. It stands for community and friendship, so people were more than happy to lend some time to her project. The resulting images are even cooler than those hip hop playing cards we covered a while back. I particularly like the ones with the voodoo vibe like the one at the top.

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