Alice de Kruijs is a fine-art photographer based in The Netherlands. She frequently touches the subject of identity and diversity and aims to go against the standard ideals and showcase stories through culture and different ethnic backgrounds, her work is a celebration of these differences in culture. As her way of life, she loves to conceptually and symbolically tell stories. Usually by showing a different perspective on personal daily life struggles.
Born in 1981 in the east of The Netherlands she grew up in an artistic family. Nevertheless, her true artistic passion in photography started in her late twenties. After graduating from International Fashion Design and later on from Applied Photography Design with a specialisation in Fine-art portraits she dedicated her life to conceptual photography. In her early thirties she gradually moved to fine-art photography in combination with story telling photography.
Her new editorial photo series “Sahara Giants” pays homage to the Kiffians who inhabited the Sahara Desert between 8000 - 6000 BC.
About 10 thousand years ago came here tribes of strong people, hunters and fishers, which scientists attributed to the Kiffi culture. Just two millennia earlier, the last ice age ended, the Earth entered the Holocene, and the Sahara, which remained a dry desert for many thousands of years, was filled with water and life. There was a small lake in Gobero (current NIger), which, according to archaeologists, attracted people. At the bottom of the lake there were many shells of bivalve mollusks, which people of the Stone Age ate, and in its waters up to 8 meters deep there were turtles and fish, including relatives of the giant Nile perch, whose length reached 1.5–2 meters.
In order to maintain powerful, the Kiffians had to get protein-rich food, and this, in the conditions of the Stone Age, always had to mean a very intense rhythm of life with constant hunting and fishing. Apparently, these people lived like this for one and a half thousand years, but about 8 thousand years ago they suddenly disappeared. According at that moment another drought came to Africa, turning the Sahara back into the desert for a thousand years.
Alice’s works have been exhibited in different galleries around the world and we can’t wait to see more from her.
Check out more photos from “Sahara Girants” below 👇🏾
