A girl throws colored powder on her friend as they celebrate Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, in Mumbai, India, Friday, March 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool, File)
A continent as large as Asia rarely speaks in a single tone.
Its 2025 played out in polyphony — with chords of devotion, chaos, spectacle and fatigue — each a reminder of how much can, and does, coexist.
AP photographs, taken from the Himalayas to the Java Sea, recorded all of them.
Some moments are quiet.
From above, the Rohingya refugee camps at Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar appear as calm, tidy rows — a quiet geometry that masks the dirge of a people in exile. In the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, a dove settles on a soldier’s hat during an independence day ceremony. Bright red powder drifts like a quiet fog as a girl celebrates the Hindu festival of Holi in Mumbai, India.
Vibrant motion cut through elsewhere.
Traditional dancers in West Java, Indonesia, prepare to head out, a bright dragon head framed in the doorway. Migratory birds swirl above the Yamuna River as people in a boat scatter feed across the Indian river dawn. A humanoid robot pounds down a racetrack in Beijing, one of many chrome and circuitry competitors chasing the 1,500-meter finish.
In politics, ceremony and upheaval rang out.
Lawmakers in Tokyo applaud Japan’s first female prime minister. A young woman in Seoul, South Korea, waits through the night near the Constitutional Court, waiting to hear if a president would fall after declaring martial law. In Kathmandu, Nepal, a protester roars against corruption, clutching a captured police shield as if willing the world to change.
And woven into the year were the harsh notes of disasters.
In Bangkok, a high rise that collapsed after a major earthquake in Myanmar looms over rescuers moving in a thin line below. In Ahmedabad, India, a woman wails at a the funeral of a plane crash, her grieving body held upright only by the hands of those gathering to steady her. In Hong Kong, two grey-haired men stand shoulder to shoulder, watching in horror as a Hong Kong high-rise burns against the night sky.
Laborers huddle together under a police barricade in Delhi and sipped tea while sheltering from rain. A couple share a wedding kiss in a Filipino church inundated with floodwaters.
Together, they showed how life persisted despite it all, quietly stitching itself back together, frame by frame.
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Photo editing by Yirmiyan Arthur and Courtney Dittmar.
Devotees pray with lamps during a ritual of Rakher Upobash, a Hindu religious festival that involves a daylong fast and overnight prayer seeking spiritual purification, honoring Hindu saint Loknath Brahmachari, at a temple in Chakla, West Bengal, India, Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Bikas Das, File)Members of dragon dance club Naga Merah Putih (Red White Dragon), named after the Indonesian national colors, prepare to leave for a shopping mall for a performance in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, Sunday, Jan. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara, File)An aerial view of a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, March 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu, File)Swami Bhupender Giri, a Naga Sadhu from the Niranjani Akhara, arrives for ritualistic dip at Sangam, the confluence of the Rivers Ganges, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati, on the auspicious Makar Sankranti day during the Maha Kumbh festival, which is one of the world’s largest religious gatherings, in Prayagraj, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, India, Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh, file)Miss Mexico Fatima Bosch, right, and Miss Thailand Praveenar Singh hold hands while waiting for the announcement of winner for the 2025 Miss Universe pageant in Nonthaburi, north of Bangkok, in Nonthaburi province, Thailand, Friday, Nov. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File)Mountaineers form a queue as they approach the summit of Mount Everest in Nepal, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Kunga Sherpa, File)Lawmakers applaud as Sanae Takaichi, center, is elected as Japan’s new prime minister during the extraordinary session of the lower house, in Tokyo, Japan, Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025.(AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)Yu Xiaofeng leaps as she jumps into a pool carved from ice on the frozen Songhua river in Harbin in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)A Sikh paramilitary soldier adjusts his moustache before taking part in a parade during the country’s Independence Day celebrations in Guwahati, India, Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath, File)Hostesses fill up tea cups for the leaders before the opening session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Tuesday, March 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)Judy Bertuso, left, feeds her husband Apollo inside a tent at an evacuation center as Typhoon Fung-wong enters the country on Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025 in Quezon city, Philippines. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)Tanzin Dolma milks a yak as her husband, Punchuk Namdol, collects yak dung in the background on an early morning in Maan village, Ladakh, India, Tuesday, July 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)People vote at a polling booth at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, Saturday, May 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Baker, File)Rescuers work at the site a high-rise building under construction that collapsed after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, March 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn, File)Participants carry a portable shrine, or mikoshi, into the sea during a purification rite at the annual Kurihama Sumiyoshi Shrine Festival at Kurihama, Yokosuka city, south of Tokyo Sunday, July 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)Abdul Sattar, 70, untangles a piece of thread from his hair as he operates a power weaving loom at a workshop in Bhiwandi, India, Feb. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool, File)A dove perches on the hat of an Indonesian Army soldier during a flag raising ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the country’s independence at Merdeka Palace in Jakarta, Indonesia, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim), File)A robot competes in the 1500m race during the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, China, Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A., File)A protester wearing a flak jacket and carrying a shield snatched from a policeman shouts slogans at the Singha Durbar, the seat of Nepal government’s various ministries and offices, during a protest against social media ban and corruption in Kathmandu, Nepal, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha, File)A Chinese punk rocker smokes a cigarette as he waits backstage during a punk festival in Hangzhou, China, Friday, Jan. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)Muslim women take pictures of people marching with the Indian flag, part of a campaign encouraging every household to hoist the national flag, as a paramilitary soldier stands guard, ahead of India’s Independence Day in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan, File)A camel herder sits near cattle at the annual cattle fair in Pushkar, in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh, File)Antima Kumari helps her brother-in-law Sikandar Chaudhary hold his son close with the Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC), a skin-to-skin contact to promote bonding and well-being, at home in Gurugram, a satellite city of New Delhi, India, on Aug. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)Laborers drink tea while taking shelter from the rain under metal panels in New Delhi, India, Monday, Sept. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)Jo Eun-jin, who stayed overnight on the street, waits for the start of a rally calling for impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to step down, near the Constitutional Court in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)People look at flames engulfing a building after a fire broke out at Wang Fuk Court, a residential estate in the Tai Po district of Hong Kong’s New Territories, Wednesday, Nov. 26 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei, File)Family members and relatives of Akash Patni, a victim of the Air India plane crash, grieves during his funeral procession in Ahmedabad, India, Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki, File)Abbot Phut Analayo, right, and other monks and residents who fled clashes between Thai and Cambodian soldiers, take shelter in Surin province, Thailand, Saturday, July 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File)People feed migratory birds early in the morning on the river Yamuna in New Delhi, Sunday, Nov. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/ Rajesh Kumar Singh, File)Newlyweds Jade Rick Verdillo right, and Jamaica kiss during their wedding at the flooded Barasoain church in Malolos, Bulacan province, Philippines on Tuesday, July 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)
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