Contact:
Nicolette Woodburn
Richards/Gravelle
214.891.7765
nicolette_woodburn@richards.com
DALLAS, March 13, 2006 – Contemporary life in mainland Southeast Asia – Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia and Laos – is the subject of photographer Andrea Baldeck’s new exhibit of more than 50 black-and-white images taken between 2001 and 2002. Free to the public Touching the Mekong: A Southeast Asian Sojourn opens April 14 at The Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art and runs through July 9, 2006.
Touching the Mekong is distinctive because it illustrates modern life in a region that is often overlooked. Since the end of America’s involvement in Vietnam, the culture of Southeast Asia has been largely unexamined, but Baldeck’s works successfully highlight the subject matters of children, families, workers, market places, religious relics and lush scenery. The images are at once clean, honest and peaceful depictions of daily life in the region. The Touching the Mekong exhibit images were gleaned from 200 rolls of film taken from Baldeck’s two excursions to Southeast Asia.
“There are many reasons why I like this exhibition, but most importantly because it is a beautiful expression of the Crow Collection’s commitment to educating, sharing and highlighting different cultures,” said Amy Hofland, director of the Crow Collection of Asian Art. “Baldeck’s photos do a wonderful job of taking you to Southeast Asia. The images expose us to a world thousands of miles away, but yet you feel instantly a part of it. We are delighted to share these works with our community and invite members and non-members alike to take part in the journey and the story of the images.”
A fine-art photographer such as Baldeck works exclusively in black-and-white and completes all of her own darkroom processing and printing. Making careful use of light and shadow, contrast and composition, she sees the photography in this exhibit as “a personal account of textured, nuanced, enigmatic moments in a fascinating world.”
Baldeck had many careers before becoming a photographer. She was a musician specializing in the French horn and flute as well as an anesthesiologist in several Philadelphia area hospitals and has worked as a volunteer internist in Haiti and Grenada, bringing her camera along in her medicine bag. In the early 1990s she left music and medicine behind and committed to photography, and by 1996 she had published her first book of photography, The Heart of Haiti.
Baldeck’s photography has been shown in the Polk Museum of Art, Lakeland, Florida; Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York; Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia; and the Century Club, Rochester, New York.
The Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art is free to the public. It is located at 2010 Flora Street, Dallas and open Tuesdays – Sundays from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. with extended hours on Thursdays until 9 p.m. For more information, visit www.crowcollection.org or call 214-979-6440.
The Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art contains more than 600 paintings, objects of metal and stone, and large architectural pieces from China, Japan, India, and Southeast Asia. Over 300 works are on display in the galleries including precious jade ornaments from China, delicate Japanese scrolls and a rarely seen 28-foot by 12-foot sandstone facade of an 18th century Indian residence.
PHOTOGRAPHS available upon request: nicolette_woodburn@richards.com
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