Welcome to POY Asia’s inaugural exhibition!
We are proud that Pictures of the Year Asia is part of Pictures of the Year International, the oldest and most prestigious photojournalism competition program in the world. POY is a program of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism.
Founded in 1944 by University of Missouri Professor Cliff Edom, POY’s initial exhibit was entitled “The First Annual Fifty-Print Exhibition of New and Feature Pictures”.
In nearly eight decades, the POY family has grown to include College Photographer of the Year, POY Latin America and, in 2020, POY Asia. Each year nearly 4,000 photographers working in more than 100 countries submit more than 60,000 images and stories to the POY competitions.
In honor of Edom’s first exhibit, we are excited to present 50 images from this year’s POY Asia competition.
We hope to create meaningful connections by sharing the images and stories reported by photographers who live and work in Asia. The images in this exhibit represent some of the biggest stories in Asia today, including the American military leaving Afghanistan, the political challenges and protests in Myanmar and the exhausting second year of COVID-19.
While the journalistic value of this exhibit makes it a good “document of record,” its photographic aesthetic is what gives it power. The poetry of these images preserves the emotions of each moment and catapults us directly into the story.
Expert panels selected this powerful body of work through insightful conversations that were livestreamed and open to all. For students and visitors who watched the judging, the experience could be inspiring, humbling and even transformative.
Together, the POY programs honor photojournalists and visual editors across the world who document the news, social issues and cultural trends that capture our interest and command our attention. In all of our efforts, we hold to the guiding principle set forth by POY founder Cliff Edom, “Show truth with a camera.”
