Teun Voeten was originally born in the Netherlands. After a year as an exchange student in New Jersey, he travelled for a while all over Europe. Later, he started to study cultural anthropology and philosophy at Leiden University, Netherlands. While studying, he grew interested in photography and learned the profession by working as a photo-assistant, both in Holland and in New York, where he studied at the School of Visual Arts. Over the years to follow, Voeten covered the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Haiti and Rwanda for Dutch, Belgian, German and American publications. Voeten soon developed a taste for the so called 'forgotten wars' and went out to document the ongoing crises in Colombia, Afghanistan, Sudan and Sierra Leone. More recently, he focused his camera on the Gaza strip, the DR Congo and North Korea (design and architecture) as well as Chad (Darfur crisis), Iran, China (pollution) and more recently, in 2012, the Arab Spring in Egypt and Libya. Voeten has been published in 'Vanity Fair', 'The New Yorker', 'NY Times Magazine', 'National Geographic Magazine', 'Newsweek', 'Time', 'Granta', 'Village Voice', 'Frankfurter Allgemeine', between others. His photos are used worldwide by relief organisations such as the International Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, UNICEF, UNHCR, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Having won several awards for his photography and writing, Voeten is a regular guest on talk shows from all major networks in the Netherlands and Belgium, and is a sought after lecturer at universities and other cultural institutions in Europe and the USA.