Photo display gives glimpse of changing capital

"The rare set of black-and-white photographs captures the architectural beauty of Beijing's quadrangles and hutong. Some are very rich in detail, such as posters, couplets, street signs and graffiti, giving viewers a sense of what traditional life was like in Beijing," Choy says.

To prepare for the exhibition, Feng and several of his students spent one week developing the photos by using classic techniques, working over 10 hours a day. In teaching, Feng insists that his students learn and practice traditional techniques of film photography and darkroom operations to experience the features of the films despite advanced digital techniques that are widely used today. This way students majoring in photography will know about the differences in photographic expression of the two categories.

Feng was among the first Chinese photographers to devote themselves to large-format photography. In 2000, soon after he received a master's degree in Japan, he started the first domestic course in this field at Beijing Film Academy, introducing the concepts and skills.

According to him, the past two decades have seen great advancement in large-format photography in China due to the country's economic progress, and as a growing population can afford it.

Feng's other representative works include a collection of portraits of Tibetans and one featuring life and landscape in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, both taken in the 1990s through the beginning of the 21st century.

Feng has been creating a new series, featuring the Huangshan Mountain in East China's Anhui province, in the recent decade and he is still working on it.

The current exhibition runs until the end of the year.