The Foreign Correspondents' Association of East Africa (FCAEA) unveiled last week its second photography exhibit, billed as a portrait of Africa usually unseen in newspapers.

In selecting the photos, we wanted to give our audience - mostly locals but also foreigners here in the country - a different glimpse into the continent.

We also wanted to give our photographers a chance to submit their photos that may not be newsworthy enough to make it into newspapers, but are powerful and valid nonetheless.

The photos on display touch on poverty, disease and war - issues that are tragically apparent on the continent - but do so in a way that is subtle yet poignant.

So I was dismayed to read Mwenda wa Micheni's piece on Monday which accused the FCAEA of censorship in selecting the photos and for displaying an exhibit that lacked "any creative inclination".

We did not want the stark reality of disease, conflict and poverty that sadly beset many parts of Africa to dominate the exhibit. When selecting the 49 photos out of some 150 submissions, the panel of foreign and local judges kept this in mind.

But we knew we could not avoid those realities. While it's always a treat as a journalist in Africa to write stories about the economy or innovation, which are abundant here, we often get bogged down with the most prominent issues. But to the best of our capabilities we selected the shots that hang at the Alliance Francaise.

In a conversation the day his piece went to print, Micheni explained his thoughts on our apparent self-censorship, telling me he would have preferred to see more raw images of war, poverty and disease, writing in his article that the FCAEA feared criticism in its choice of photos. Not only is this completely false, but Micheni seems to miss the point of most of the photos on display.

What is a raw image of poverty? A starving child? Emaciated cattle being led by an even more emaciated herder? The FCAEA did depict poverty in its exhibit, but in a way that is beautiful and understated yet powerful nonetheless. We managed to present the issues that most affect this continent, without giving in to stereotype.

One example is the photograph of a boy reading at night in his shack in Kibera, with the light of an oil lamp his only recourse to illumination. Women in a refugee camp in Sudan's Darfur region line up for food, and manage to change the idea of a drab makeshift settlement with their bursts of colourful veils and on some faces, smiles.

The range of photos is astonishing. The shots taken by local photojournalists, which Micheni highlights in his article, give the audience a window into the harsh tactics of Kenyan police, or the brutal ways of the banned Mungiki sect and the passion of Orange Democratic Movement supporters yearning for change.

Our foreign members display photos of the availability of weapons in southern Sudan, and the way the cold metal contrasts with pastoralist life; they show women at work in Kenya's coffee farms and kids at play in Mogadishu's unusually tame streets.

But beyond the typical or stereotypical facets of the continent, the exhibit pushes the boundaries to include issues not always covered in the mainstream foreign press.

The problem of overcrowding in Kenya's free primary education is concretised in a photo of a huge mass of children in blue uniforms packed into Kibera's Olympic Primary School. To give visitors a glimpse into northern Ethiopian industry, what looks like a prehistoric scene is actually a man breaking stones using a sharp club in order to build a tax office in the remote region of Afar.

Micheni questions the artistic value of the exhibit, asking "what can be artistic about Karamojong children walking between traditional huts to label it a piece of art?"

I disagree with his assertion and continue to boast about the beauty of each photo. We selected photos based on their news value, their emotive and aesthetic qualities.

Tia is the head of Foreign Correspondents' Association of East Africa.