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Great art gives us new ways to look at complicated topics, and An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain does just that. Now on view at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, this nationally touring exhibition presents the first comprehensive survey of the work of celebrated photographer An-My Lê. Featuring more almost eighty photographs covering twenty-five years of the artist’s career, the exhibition provides unprecedented insight into her subtle, evocative images that explore the complexity of American history and conflict. Lê has spent decades exploring the edges of war and recording these landscapes of conflict in beautiful, classically composed photographs. Born in Saigon
An-My Lê (b. 1960), Rescue, 1999-2002, gelatin silver print, © An-My Lê. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, Paris, and London
during the Vietnam War, she vividly remembers the sights, sounds, and smells of growing up in a warzone. She and her family were eventually evacuated by the U.S. military in 1975, but it would take another 20 years for Lê to return to her
An-My Lê (b. 1960), Untitled, Hanoi, 1995, gelatin silver print, © An-My Lê. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, Paris, and London
homeland, this time with a large-format camera in tow. The exhibition presents selections from five of Lê’s major series, beginning with “Viêt Nam” (1994-98), which explores the lasting effects of the Vietnam War on the country of her birth, addressing both her memories of the country and its reality decades later. Having examined the war abroad, she came back to consider its legacy at home in the series, “Small Wars” (19992002), in which she photographed U.S.based Vietnam War reenactors, exploring the legacy and mythology of the Vietnam War for contemporary Americans. Lê’s next two series dealt with the contemporary U.S. military instead of its history. In “29 Palms” (2003-04) she photographed marines training in the desert of California before deployment to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then in “Events Ashore” (2005-14) she expanded her scope to include U.S. naval vessels and
Cover image: An-My Lê (b. 1960), Colonel Greenwood, 2003-2004, gelatin silver print, Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, Chicago, Gift of Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, NM; 2011:88, © An-My Lê. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, Paris, and London 4
KEY MAGAZINE
May 2021
