RECENT DEVELOPMENTS Summer Exhibition July 14 - August 26, 2000 DALLAS, TX--This summer, Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery will feature new talent to the Dallas area from the United States, Scotland, and Korea. Both black and white and color photography will be represented. The range of photography explores nature, family, circles and toys. The three artists represented from the U.S. are: Catherine Angel, Vicki Ragan, and Rick Chapman. San Francisco based Rick Chapman's photographs are from a series he has worked on in the past five years, Circles. His found objects, so to speak, are a circular haystack, a water tank, a boulder, a manhole cover, a windmill etc. All having the shape of a circle. This series is playful but also hinges on the philosophical implications of the circle-the universal truth of the circle/sphere. Catherine Angel photographs her children, all three adopted from India. In Catherine's earlier photographs she collages imagery and text searching meanings for her serious illness that prevented her from ever conceiving. The series represented in this exhibition is devoted to portraits of her three girls, a sensitive document of time, childhood, beauty and love. Vicki Ragan's work takes a humorous plunge in her "Odd Jobs" series. These color photographs poke fun of art critics, art historians, and curators by placing animal heads on dolls. For example, Sister Wendy, art historian, is standing in front of a Picasso painting with a rabbit head. Those familiar with the famous historian can sense a strange similarity. Another photograph reveals a photographer taking a picture of a dog, but the photographer has a dog head and the dog has a human head--an obvious poke at Wegman. Two artists from outside the U.S. interpret nature in two diverse ways. Bohnchang Koo, from Korea, photographs fragments of grass, twigs in a background of white. The image becomes almost calligraphy, very simple black fragments of line reflect a certain Zen quality. His prints are sublime. In 1995 Iain Stewart (Scotland) became interested in photographing the sea after he explored the Scottish landscape. In these images, color is the important subject. The horizon line breaks into different values of the primary colors. Iain's photographs, as well as Bohnchang's are quite painterly and evoke similar response, but both are disparate views of nature. In the small gallery, Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery will exhibit new acquisitions. Photographs by established artists Elliott Erwitt, Mariana Yampolski and Alfred Gescheidt will be included. The title from this exhibition, Recent Developments, was taken from Erwitt's monograph from 1979. He has been a member of the prestigious photo organization, Magnum, as were his major influences: Robert Capa and Edward Steichen. He is known for his personal work of people and dogs, and his photojournalism. Alfred Gescheidt's photographs have mostly been seen in editorial form. He uses multiple printing techniques to create absurd imagery. For example, the lower half of a pear is the lower back torso of a woman, a sardine tin is filled with layered nude women, a 2 car garage has a car parked on one side and a car-sized woman's rear end peeping out the other side. On the more serious side, Mariana Yampolsky's photographs from Mexico show the influence of Lola Alvarez Bravo (Manuel Alvarez Bravo's wife) and the art of Mexico that was attracting so much attention during the Mexican Renaissance. She moved to Mexico in the 1940's, like many artists from America at that time, to experience the political atmosphere and the fertile arts movement of that period. Her photographs are documentary, four women Waiting for a Priest (Esperando al padrecito) and her famous portrait of a woman caressing her child (Caricia) both show Yampolski's sensitivity and love of the Mexican people.