Biography
Arlette BASHIZI is a documentary photographer and photojournalist born in 1999 in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo, and currently based in Goma where she has been working on various projects and reports since 2018. Arlette documents the daily life of her community using her camera to denounce the injustices that are experienced in the daily lives. She focuses on issues related to health, environment and culture, keeping women and youth at the center of her work.
After training in photography with the Lens on Life project in Goma, she participated in the 4th edition of the Canon Student Development Program 2020, a mentoring workshop and portfolio review session organized by Visa pour l'Image and a few months later she was received a photojournalism scholarship with VII Academy in 2021.
Member of APJD, Women Photographers and African Women Photographer, in 2022, her project "Fraicheur Deserte" which document malnutrition in the DRC received an honorable mention from the judges of the Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award. In 2021, one of her photographs was awarded in the category of Good governance: Human right, justice at the Women's Photojournalism Awards. She was also a recipient of the "Creativity Is life" grant offered by Africalia to support young African artists in July 2020.
She contributed to the collaborative project "Congo in Conversation", of Finbarr O'Reilly, winner of the 11th Carmignac Photojournalism Award dedicated to the DRC, a project that marked the beginning of her professional career in 2020. Since then her work has been published in big newspapers such as the NewYork Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, The NewHumanitarian, Al Jazeera, ... She currently works with the Reuters news agency and also as a consultant with international organizations and United Nations agencies.
The collaborative project "Sans Limites", highlighting the assets of people living with disabilities has been exhibited in the streets of Goma. Her work has also been presented in group exhibitions and in one of the main photography festivals in the world, the festival "Visa pour l'image" in France.