0. Don Eric Peris

0. Don Eric Peris

Born: 1939

Education: Self-taught Photographer        

Eric Peris, as he is popularly referred to, is an important Malaysian photographer who has done much to change earlier, prejudiced attitudes towards the art of photography in this country. A self-taught photographer, he was employed for many years as a journalistic photographer with the New Straits Times newspaper. Turning to art photography during the1970s, he began travelling to different locations in Malaysia and Asia to capture images that would illustrate ideas related to his Hinayana or the “Lesser Vehicle” Buddhist faith. Central to his artistic approach are the Buddhistic ideas of transience, decay and impermanence. And he has portrayed this aspect of his philosophical outlook in countless black and white photographs taken in the different countries of Asia.

This particular work belongs to the series of works related to a highly successful exhibition he held in 1985 entitled Images of Zen which included photographs taken around the locales of Japanese Buddhist temples in Kyoto and Nara. In this particular work the artist has concentrated on a cluster of shadows moving across a wall of a building located at the Ryoan-ji temple in Kyoto. The artist has captured a poetic moment where nature’s organic, amorphous shapes have become fused with rigid, man-made geometric shapes. It is a study of opposites. The effect, rendered in stark black and white, is a spiritually-inspired work reflecting a deep, meditative quietness.