Christophe Smets is a documentary photographer. A graduate of the École Supérieure des Arts Saint-Luc in Liège, he has been building for over twenty-five years a body of work rooted in the exploration of fragile territories, shifting identities, and overlooked social narratives.
Through committed, sensitive, and in-depth photography, he documents women’s poverty, migration, disability, female genital mutilation, collective memory, and struggles for human rights. His long-term approach, grounded in trust and proximity, seeks to reveal what escapes dominant perspectives.
His images have been published in numerous international media outlets — The Guardian, Le Monde, Libération, ELLE, De Morgen, Le Soir, La Libre Belgique, Le Vif/L’Express — and continue to circulate in the press and specialist networks.
His work, exhibited in major venues such as the Musée de la Photographie (Charleroi), the Maison Doisneau (Paris), the BELvue Museum and KVS (Brussels), continues to travel across artistic and cultural spaces in Belgium and abroad — including in Montréal, Kinshasa, and at the Voies Off in Arles.
In 2001, he founded La Boîte à Images, a platform for documentary creation and cultural engagement. Through this structure, he develops projects at the intersection of art, social issues, and education. He is currently working on Cordons, a multimedia piece addressing precarious single parenthood in Belgium.
Resisting sensationalism, his photography challenges dominant representations and strives — through images, narrative and human connection — to build bridges between worlds.