Details
In places marked by conflict, disaster, and grief, suffering is often the first thing seen. Yet it is rarely the only thing that exists.
Photojournalists spend their lives bearing witness to moments of profound loss, entering spaces that are not their own and witnessing lives forever altered.
This exhibition is not about the hardship they document. It is about what reveals itself when they remain. To stay demands trust, patience, and the willingness to stay long after the moment of spectacle has passed. In that sustained act of witnessing, something else comes into view: the quiet gestures through which people care for one another. A hand on the shoulder. A meal shared. The simple presence of someone who refuses to leave another alone.
That is solace.
Not the absence of suffering, but the presence of humanity.
Solace brings together the work of alumni of the Diploma in Visual Journalism programme at the Asian Center for Journalism. Across years of documenting stories throughout Asia, these visual journalists have captured not only the realities of crisis but also the quiet resilience that allows people to endure.
The photographs invite us to look beyond devastation alone and toward the moment of grace that persists in its midst.
This exhibition is presented by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Media Programme Asia, in partnership with the ACFJ. It will be launched in Manila, Philippines, in October, and will have an additional showing in Chiang Mai, Thailand, before it comes home at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines in November.
We accept journalistic or documentary work of any kind—whether it was produced for ACFJ's DVJ programme, previously published, unpublished, currently in progress, or entirely new work. We welcome single photographs, photo essays, photo series, and multimedia work.
Submissions close on September 16, 2026 at 11:59 pm SGT.