An-My+Lê

An-My Lê An-My Lê was born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1960. During her teenage year in 1975 which was the final year of the Vietnam War, she fled Vietnam with her family to United States and settled as a political refugee. After receiving degrees in biology from Stanford University in 1981 and from Yale University in 1993, Lê changed her major to what she was passionate for, photography.

An-My Lê creates series of photographs and films that examine the effect, consequences, and illustration of war. Her photographs are mostly black and white which emphasizes the "theme of the war with full of texture, nuance and the composition" (Art: 21). She frames a strain between the natural landscape and violent transformations into battlefields in both vast landscapes and detailed ones. Lê presently lives and works in New York. Let's look at some of her works:

“Small Wars” //**(1999-2002)
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__**About "Small Wars":**__ These arresting and remarkable images captures the battle in an unique placement of American landscapes. //Small Wars// is a reflection of the wars that have shaped the last half century in America; the war in Vietnam and the current war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its clean lines and sharp contrasts result in these outstanding images that are technically successful. //Small Wars// mostly depicts men who reenact battles from Vietnam in the forests of Virginia. The soldiers incorporated in some photos look as if they could have stepped out of 1974, when Vietnam War was taking place.

In 2005, An-My Lê told the L.A. Times: //• "Landscape has its specificity in a geological way, but it also holds so much about the history and the culture of a country. I think for anybody in exile it's connected to the idea of home. You think of the landscape and you think of the food, the air, and the smells. It's all connected to the land."// Although my topic doesn't focus on Vietnam War, I thought it was significant how the artist who acutally experienced the war had taken the photos to resemble the scenes back then. **//

“29 Palms” //** (2003-2004)

__**About "29 Palms":**__ Series of //29 Palms// is named after the military base and her subject is the view of the American landscape dominating over the military activity. Lê has a "sanitized perspective of the Iraq War that is filtered into the American public" (Art: 21). She focuses on soldiers training for deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan at the Twenty-nine Palms military base in California. //29 Palms// also shows United States Marines preparing for deployment in Middle East in the California desert.

__**An-My Lê at Work:**__ media type="youtube" key="ofhqYzW5cxg" height="344" width="425"