The Japanese media named him “a poet in imageries” and a former cultural minister of China called him “an untiring pilgrim who has piously chronicled the vast territories of China with photographs for the sake of all viewers”.

For over a quarter of a century, Feng Xuemin has doggedly recorded his personal encounters with the scenic spots in China and documented his passion for his motherland.

Feng went to study photography in Japan as a government sponsored student in 1985. Tokyo has become his home turf since then but his ties with China have grown even stronger during his stay overseas. The chores in his workplace and the invitations from various organizations in China have sent him to almost everywhere in China.

Born in Shanghai in 1953, Feng was sent to learn from the farmers of a small Yunnan commune during the Cultural Revolution in 1970. He fully adapted himself to the countryside and Yunnan Province became his second native home. When the Cultural Revolution ended, he returned to Shanghai and started working as a photo-journalist for the Shanghai Pictorial Publishing House in 1982. His life has been as adventurous as his pictures.

In 1999, he was awarded the “Sun Award”, the highest honour in photography in Japan for his photographic report on Yunnan. It was then the first time that such award was given to a non-Japanese artist in its history of 36 years. Feng now heads the photography department of the noted Japanese ADK Production Center.

In “Passion for Homeland” exhibition, Feng will put on display some of the imageries that he took over the years including a few pictures from the series that he took for Shanghai Expo 2010 on the adorable pandas in Sichuan. The exhibition runs from 1st – 22nd December, 2011.