Contemporary life in mainland Southeast Asia—Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia and Laos—is the subject of this new exhibition of more than 50 black and white images taken in 2001 and 2002 by photographer Andrea Baldeck. "Touching the Mekong: A Southeast Asian Sojourn," opens May 8 at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and continues through September 28, 2003.

Photographs of architecture, landscapes and the region's people offer a kaleidoscopic view of an area that slipped off the front page a quarter-century ago with the end of American involvement in the Vietnam War. Baldeck's work focuses on the enduring influence of ancient philosophies and religions—Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism—on societies in transition, where currents of tradition and change are constantly reshaping the cultures of the Mekong River basin.

A fine-art photographer working exclusively in black-and-white, Baldeck does all her own darkroom processing and printing. Making careful use of light and shadow, contrast and composition, she sees the photographs in this exhibition, and in the accompanying book, as "a personal account of textured, nuanced, enigmatic moments in a fascinating world."

"To travel in Southeast Asia is to be humbled by its layers of history and humanity, and by the realization that in a lifetime one could barely scratch the surface of understanding. But what a rich and tantalizing surface!" she noted.

An accompanying book, Touching the Mekong (order your copy), featuring an introductory essay by the photographer and 153 images, printed in 300-line tritone process on 100-lb. velvet paper by Becott & Company and published by University Museum Publications, will be available in May 2003 ($75, available through the Museum Shops and the Publications website).

Andrea Baldeck, whose careers have spanned music (French horn and flute) and medicine (12 years as an internist and an anaesthesiologist in Philadelphia-area hospitals), returned to photography—an old passion—in the early 1990s. Her first book, The Heart of Haiti, published in 1996, and later, solo exhibitions from that collection grew out of her experiences in that country as a volunteer physician at Hôpital Albert Schweitzer. Other photography books have included Talismanic (order your copy), in 1998, and Venice a Personal View (order your copy), in 1999.

Baldeck's photography has been shown widely throughout the region, at venues including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Morris Arboretum, the Esther Klein Gallery, and area clubs and galleries. Nationally she has had solo shows at 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. Two solo shows, including "Venice a Personal View" were featured at the Gallery Holly Snapp in Venice, Italy.

The University of Pennsylvania Museum has been a pioneer and a leader in excavation and laboratory research in Southeast Asian prehistoric archaeology since the 1960s. Two wide-screen plasma screens in the exhibition gallery will feature information about some of the projects—including the ongoing Ban Chiang Project in Thailand—that the Museum has been engaged with in that area of the world.

"Touching the Mekong" will be available for touring in January of 2004. Information and requirements for hosting the exhibit may be found here. Those interested in booking the exhibition should contact UPM's Traveling Exhibits Department by calling 215/898-1563 or by emailing Jane Epstein, Traveling Exhibits Coordinator. Information on UPM's Traveling Exhibits program may be found here.