» Tiger Cage, from Small Wars

For 30 years, the photographs of artist An-My Le have engaged the complex fictions that inform how we justify, represent, and mythologize warfare and other forms of conflict. The artist does not take a straightforward photojournalistic approach to depicting combat. Rather, with poetic attention to politics and landscape, she meditates on the meaning of perpetual violence, war’s environmental impact, and the significance of diaspora. “Being a landscape photographer”, she has said, “means creating a relationship between various categories – the individual within a larger construct such as the military, history, and culture.” 

In 1999, An-My Le traveled to Virginia and North Carolina to photograph a group of Vietnam War reenactors for Small Wars, whose title refers to armed conflict between unevenly matched combatants. The experience sharpened her sensitivity to militarized landscapes, where, she said, “every hilltop, bend in the road, group of trees, and open field became a possibility for an ambush, an escape route, a landing zone, or a campsite”. The reenactments, in which An-My Le was asked to play the roles of a South Vietnamese soldier and a Viet Cong guerrilla in exchange for access to the events, replace the battlegrounds of Vietnam with the terrain of the southern United States, where most of the combat in the American Civil War took place. The superimposition of wars, time periods, cultural histories, and disparate landscapes, which in reality cannot be mistaken for one another, creates a sense of dreamlike unease.

(Text courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery)