Ellie Van Houtte: Her Story Wins

As I looked through the breath-taking photos taken around the world by Ellie Van Houtte on her online photo portfolio, I could hardly believe that she was a 28 year-old, self-trained professional photographer. As founder and owner of Ellie Van Houtte Photography, she provides photography services for different companies and non-profit organizations to raise people’s awareness about humanitarian issues. She is a graduate from Miami University, with a major in architecture.

Ellie considers herself a “citizen diplomat” who “connects communities across the world together through cultural and political diplomacy”. She is very passionate about international humanitarian issues. In the past five years, she has traveled to many countries in south Asia and documented the life of people there: she went to India to record the rural schools and social institutions, and even to Chalna, Bangladesh to document the life of local people under the impact of severe climate change. For her, taking photos is not just a way to earn a living, it’s also about learning and appreciating, and sharing the beauty around her with others. Rather than showing the negative side of life on the battle field, Ellie prefers to show positive changes. She wants to use her photography to show the world that “even when people live with little, they can have an optimistic outlook on life”. Besides taking pictures, she has coordinated arts diplomacy outreach, including a kite making project with school children in cyclone affected villages in Bangladesh. She’s trying to make things better as both an observer and an activist.

Ellie is now developing her first multi-media project, “Her Story Wins”, featuring women running for office in Kenya and the U.S. After working on the campaign for Hillary Clinton for 6 months, Ellie became fully aware of the challenges and stereotypes women candidates face. She knows that women running for office face challenges worldwide and feels a strong obligation to “change the picture”. She found an opportunity to create this project when she met Jared Ondieki, the founder of CEPACET (The Center for Partnership and Civic Engagement), an organization that brings justice to Kenyan citizens. Over the next twelve months, she will be interviewing women candidates in both Kenya and the U.S. respectively and then comparing their stories. The severity of the discrimination ranges among countries and regions, but practices that prevent women from obtaining public office is detrimental to women, families, communities and countries. Ellie is bringing this critical problem to light. The stories that Ellie will capture hope to depict not only the challenges women candidates face, but also the positive impact that they have on other women.

As a community-concerned photographer and defender of women’s rights, Ellie is doing her part to change things in a creative way, by telling stories through photography. Her photos are beautiful and inspiring, and we feature some of them on our NoLimits website.

Like her “Her Story Wins” facebook page, click here.
Click to check out the “Her Story Wins” website.
Click here to view Ellie’s online photo portfolio.