POY Asia Judges
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POY Asia 2023
Tokyo, JAPAN
Takaaki Iwabu is a photo editor at Bloomberg. He works at the Bloomberg’s Tokyo Bureau. After working in the United States as a newspaper photographer for nearly 20 years, he returned to his hometown in Yokohama in 2013. For about 3 years, he worked as a producer for the Newsline, an hourly news program broadcast by NHK World. He joined Bloomberg’s Asia photo desk 7 years ago. Iwabu was a staff photographer with The Niagara Gazette in Niagara Falls, New York, The State Newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, and The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is a graduate of Nihon University with B.A. in International Relations, and Marshall University with M.A. in Journalism. He has won more than 50 photography awards, including the Society of Newspaper Design’s Silver Award and the Asian American Journalists Association’s National Award in Photography. He was twice named South Carolina Newspaper Photographer of the Year.
Uma Bista is a photographer based in Nepal. She works on visual narratives that focus on issues of social, cultural, familial, personal, political, and psychological perspectives on gender inequality, based in Nepal. She is an alumnus of Pathshala South Asian Media Institute and Angkor Photo Festival & Workshop. She is a Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellow in 2020. Uma was named in the British Journal of Photography’s annual “Ones to Watch 2019”. Her works are being published and exhibited locally and internationally. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, NPR, The Guardian, and Caravan.
Zhou Yang is a photographer exploring themes of memory, cultural heritage and myths, and has been exhibited in major photo festivals and fairs in China and abroad in the past decade, such as Lianzhoufoto, Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival, Image of Silk Road Photography Biennale of Tianshui and Photofairs Shanghai. She believes in photography’s ability to reveal the unseen and the invisible and her practice now takes leave from the reality and ventures into the spiritual realm. Her on-going project, Faërie, intends to represent traditional Chinese literati gardens as fictional space and time where it is possible to escape mortality. She has also translated many photography theory books into Chinese, including Annie Leibovitz at Work and Geoffrey Batchen’s Each Wild Idea. Originally from China, Zhou graduated with a MA in Photojournalism at the University of Westminster in UK and a BA in Broadcasting and Television Journalism at Shanghai International Studies University. She is now based in Birmingham, UK, where she just started the first year of her PhD programme, which will see her continuing her interest in literati gardens, through the representation in contemporary Chinese art.
Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA
Suzanne Lee is a photographer dividing her time between long-form personal photography projects and commissions. Her commissioned work spans the genres of editorial assignments as well as producing turnkey projects for non-governmental institutions and the corporate sector while her personal work focuses on cultural identity, gender equality, women and child rights and environmental issues. Suzanne continues to work on assignments as well as collaborative projects with cross-disciplinary artists across the board in the Asia Pacific region. Suzanne’s work is recognised in multiple international awards and has been exhibited in print and multimedia exhibitions globally. She is regularly invited to speak in universities, on television and radio shows, and has served as a jury on photo competitions. After living in India and Hong Kong for over a decade, Suzanne is now working out of Malaysia. She is a member of Panos Pictures as well as Women Photograph. She is a Global Imaging Ambassador for Sony Cameras and is supported by Wotancraft Atelier.
POY Asia 2022
Tokyo, JAPAN
Takaaki Iwabu is a photo editor at Bloomberg. He works at the Bloomberg’s Tokyo Bureau. After working in the United States as a newspaper photographer for nearly 20 years, he returned to his hometown in Yokohama in 2013. For about 3 years, he worked as a producer for the Newsline, an hourly news program broadcast by NHK World. He joined Bloomberg’s Asia photo desk 7 years ago. Iwabu was a staff photographer with The Niagara Gazette in Niagara Falls, New York, The State Newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, and The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is a graduate of Nihon University with B.A. in International Relations, and Marshall University with M.A. in Journalism. He has won more than 50 photography awards, including the Society of Newspaper Design’s Silver Award and the Asian American Journalists Association’s National Award in Photography. He was twice named South Carolina Newspaper Photographer of the Year.
Uma Bista is a photographer based in Nepal. She works on visual narratives that focus on issues of social, cultural, familial, personal, political, and psychological perspectives on gender inequality, based in Nepal. She is an alumnus of Pathshala South Asian Media Institute and Angkor Photo Festival & Workshop. She is a Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellow in 2020. Uma was named in the British Journal of Photography’s annual “Ones to Watch 2019”. Her works are being published and exhibited locally and internationally. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde, NPR, The Guardian, and Caravan.
Zhou Yang is a photographer exploring themes of memory, cultural heritage and myths, and has been exhibited in major photo festivals and fairs in China and abroad in the past decade, such as Lianzhoufoto, Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival, Image of Silk Road Photography Biennale of Tianshui and Photofairs Shanghai. She believes in photography’s ability to reveal the unseen and the invisible and her practice now takes leave from the reality and ventures into the spiritual realm. Her on-going project, Faërie, intends to represent traditional Chinese literati gardens as fictional space and time where it is possible to escape mortality. She has also translated many photography theory books into Chinese, including Annie Leibovitz at Work and Geoffrey Batchen’s Each Wild Idea. Originally from China, Zhou graduated with a MA in Photojournalism at the University of Westminster in UK and a BA in Broadcasting and Television Journalism at Shanghai International Studies University. She is now based in Birmingham, UK, where she just started the first year of her PhD programme, which will see her continuing her interest in literati gardens, through the representation in contemporary Chinese art.
