The country’s comfort women will take center stage in an exhibit by photojournalist Richard Jacob Dy to be held at the HUB, First United Building in Escolta, Manila from Feb. 24 to March 3.
“Comfort women” was the name given to hundreds of women forcibly taken from their homes and villages and made to serve as sex slaves to Japanese soldiers in so-called “comfort stations” during World War II.
Dy’s exhibit culminates in a talk featuring the photojournalist and Lola Estelita Dy on March 3, at 3 p.m. at the exhibit venue. Lola Estelita (no relation to Richard) is one of the last surviving Filipino comfort women and belongs to the organization Lila Pilipina.
Dy calls his project “Huling Habilin ni Lola.” He first started taking the photographs in 2010 when he was a student at the University of the Philippines. He continued with “Huling Habilin” while he was taking his Diploma in Photojournalism course at the Konrad Adenauer Asian Center for Journalism in 2012 and completed them in 2014.
Dy is a photographer and humanitarian worker. Born in 1991 in Quezon City, Philippines, he moved to Davao City as a child and later emigrated to Saudi Arabia to live with his father, an overseas Filipino worker. He returned to the Philippines to study at the UP, where he served on the staff on the Philippine Collegian.
He currently works in the children’s rights sector and occasionally takes photographs as part of his job. Before this, he was selected to be part of photo festival workshops in Siem Reap, Cambodia and New Delhi, India. His first photo workshop was with the Philippine Center for Photojournalism, which led to a Diploma in Photojournalism fellowship at the Konrad Adenauer Asian Center for Journalism.
