Based in New York City, USA,

with occasional availability in Tokyo, Osaka and Nara, Japan

+1 917-334-0481

Arisa Haboshi is a Japanese human rights researcher and photographer based in New York city, documenting migration, labor, and faith within Senegalese communities. Her ongoing long-term project, New York Baye Falls, was awarded the Alexia Vision Grant 2026 in the Student category and the Alexia Emerging Photographer Grant 2026, sponsored by the VII Foundation. Her work examines how post-colonial structural violence shapes daily life - economically, politically, and socially - while highlighting the quiet resilience that sustains the community.

In 2017, she graduated from Osaka University, with a Bachelor of Arts in Language and Culture, majoring in Swahili Language and African culture. During her time at the university, she spent one year in Tanzania, where she studied Swahili culture and literature.

She began her career as a marketer for Sony’s camera products, where she started photographing nature in Sendai and her community in Nara and Tokyo, Japan. After approximately four years at Sony, she earned a Master’s degree in Sociology, Human Rights and Politics from the London School of Economicsand Political Science. Her thesis focused on measures to prevent and address adverse human rights impacts on a community in Tanzania caused by a gold mining company. During her studies, she contributed to two NGOs in Japan as a researcher and writer, focusing on the responsibility of business enterprises.

After graduation, she worked for the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a co-researcher. She traveled and conducted interview research at dozens of factories, labor unions and government agencies located in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Viet Nam. The report, ‘Responsible Business Conduct and Human Rights Due Diligence: Good Practices of Japanese Companies (2024)’ was published. She has continued taking street photography in Tokyo and London after she left Sony.

In 2024, she began studying documentary practice and visual journalism at the International Center of Photography in New York. Her long-term project, New York Baye Falls, developed during her program at ICP, was awarded the Alexia Vision Grant in the Student category and the Alexia Emerging Photographer Grant, sponsored by the VII Foundation. Both grants are administered through the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and are widely recognized honors in documentary photography and visual journalism.