Haiku Impressions is one of revered humanist photographer Eric Peris’s three major series focusing on Japan. The others are Images of Zen and Autumn (two series). The picture of contemplative nirvana was taken at the Daitoku-ji temple, one of 14 autonomous branches of the Rinzai School, and its main one. The temple, founded in 1319, has some two-dozen sub-temples within a large walled complex in Kita-ku in Kyoto, and is associated with the tea ceremony and the powerful daimyo Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Not all the temples are open to the public. Haiku is an epigrammatic Japanese verse form in 17 syllables, with its main exponents being Basho, Issa, Buson and Shiki. The sand-raking mandalas in the garden are created by the monks as a ritual of meditation discipline, and are constantly re-formed. The exhibition, Haiku Impressions, was held at the Equatorial Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, and the Penang State Art Gallery in Penang. Eric was given a Japanese exhibition of his career works by the museum of the ‘Photo Town’ Higashikawa in Hokkaido. Eric Peris is a photo-journalist since 1965 when he joined the defunct magazine, Fanfare, and later worked for The New Straits Times where he retired as Photo Editor (1991-95). He had been a photography newspaper columnist and curator (co-curator, Photography as Art at the National Art Gallery in 1996) besides a co-ordinator/director/consultant/adviser to several programmes, training and competitions. He was the chairman of the Press Awards for Photography. He has held more than 40 solo exhibitions since Through Thai windows and Doorways in 1982. His book, Gitanjali, is a photography interpretation of Nobel-Prize-winning Rabindranath Tagore’s literary work. He studied Physics (Nuclear Physics and Cosmology) at the Singapore University in 1963-69, but did not complete. His father, O. Don Peris (1893-1975) is a pioneer artist who served informally as a royal artist in the Johor court of Sultan Sir Ibrahim.