Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In one of An-My Le's photographs of American Marines training for Iraq in the Mojave desert, a group of barrels is marked with the phrase "Do Not Shoot." Obviously, the photographer didn't heed this warning, and the result is the most recent, timely series inof images in this compelling first monograph. Earlier photographs document a group of Vietnam War reenactors in South Carolina who, like their better-known Civil War counterparts, restage battles, training and the daily life of soldiers. An-My Le is part of a new crop of artists who merge documentary and landscape photography to explore history and current events with an emotional subtext and from a very personal point of view.
Synopsis
An-My L was born in Vietnam in 1960 and came to the United States as a political refugee at age fifteen. She received a grant to return to her homeland just after U.S./Vietnamese relations were formally restored. L went back several times in 1994--97, creating stunning large-format, black-and-white photographs, expertly printed in a middle-gray scale reminiscent of Robert Adams. These images do not address the war specifically, but rather represent L 's attempt to reconcile memories of her childhood home with the contemporary landscape that now confronted her. The war haunts the images in eerie metaphors: dozens of kites double as dive-bombing planes; crop fires and construction sites recall napalm and mass graves.
In 1999 L began working with Vietnam War reenactors in North Carolina who restage battles as well as the training and daily life of soldiers--both Viet Cong and American GIs. For four summers, she not only photographed but also participated in battles of the Vietnam War restaged on her adopted American soil. Relating to both documentary and staged photography, the work is aesthetically rigorous and conceptually challenging. Soldiers at rest give themselves up to portraiture, while battle compositions recognizable from classic war photojournalism possess the qualities of a dream. Most recently, L has photographed exercises performed by the U.S. military in the American desert in preparation for maneuvers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Small Wars collects these three eloquent series in one volume. As a trilogy, the works brilliantly elucidate the complicated nature of the aesthetics and spectacle of war. But perhaps the most intriguing conceptual component is L 's own relationship to the subjects and the landscapes she presents.
The book is supported by the Jerome Foundation in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial and in recognition of the valuable cultural contributions of artists to society. Small Wars also received support from the Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico.