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An-My Lê in "Protest"

Landscape photographer An-My Lê is fascinated by military war exercises. “I think my main goal is to try to photograph landscape in such a way so that history could be suggested through the landscape, whether industrial history or my personal history,” she says.

Lê discusses her return to Vietnam, where she grew up amid the violence of the Vietnam War, to photograph people’s activities, revisit childhood memories, and reconnect with her homeland, as well as her experience photographing military re-enactors, whom she found on the Internet. Unable to travel to Iraq to document current U.S. incursions in the Middle East, Lê worked with marines training at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in California.

More information and credits

Credits

Created by: Susan Sollins & Susan Dowling. Executive Producer & Curator: Susan Sollins. Series Producer: Eve-Laure Moros Ortega. Associate Producer: Migs Wright. Associate Curator: Wesley Miller. Production Manager: Alice Bertoni & Nick Ravich. Production Coordinator: Amanda Donnan & Meredith Klein. Consulting Director: Charles Atlas. Editor: Lizzie Donahue. Director of Photography: Christine Burrill, Bob Elfstrom, Mead Hunt, & Joel Shapiro. Additional Photography: David Howe & Nick Ravich. Sound: Tom Bergin, Ray Day, Mark Mandler, Roger Phenix, Yuri Raicin, & Merce Williams. Audio Technician: Peter Holcomb. Assistant Camera: Sean Brown, Craig Feldman, Brian Hwang, Michael Pruitt-Bruun, & Amy Lane Tucker. Production Assistant: Sebastián Dib Ruiz. Makeup: Kim Baker. Additional Animation: Ben Baudhuin, Shawn Dunbar, & Joaquin Perez.

Creative Consultant: Ed Sherin. Art Direction & Design: Open, New York. On-Line Editor: Don Wyllie. Composer: Peter Foley. Voice-Over Artist: Jace Alexander. Sound Editing: Margaret Crimmins & Greg Smith. Sound Mix: Cory Melious & Tony Volante. Animation Stand: Frank Ferrigno. Assistant Editor: Ahmed Amer, Jennifer Chiurco, & George Panos.

Artworks Courtesy of: © 2007 Jenny Holzer, member Artist Rights Society (ARS), NY; Alfredo Jaar; An-My Lê; Nancy Spero; Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela; Cheim & Read, New York; Galerie Lelong, New York; & Murray Guy, New York.

Special Thanks: Erick Anderson; The Art21 Board of Trustees; Vanessa Bergonzoli; Bob Robert Blanton; Brand X Editions, New York; Marc Breslin; Steven Brooks; Chris Burnside; Pat Casteel; Henri Cole; Dog Bark Sound; Elena Exposito; Christopher Fedorak; Frame:Runner NYC; Fundacion Telefonica Chile, Santiago; Galeríia Gabriela Mistral, Santiago; Mike Glier; Mary Beth Gregg; Janice Guy; Deborah Herring; Stephanie Joson; Meredith Klein; Samm Kunce; Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton; Mindy McDaniel; Capt. Beverly Miramontes; Margaret Murray; John Pilson; Rebecca Shalomoff; Amy Shapiro; Silverstein Properties; Margarita Silva Donoso; Irene Sosa; Sound Lounge; Joonyoung Suk; Tilcon New York; Joe Tompkins; Claudia Villaseca Casanueva; Joyce Watson; & Steve Wylie.

Director of Education & Public Programs: Tana Hargest. Education Consultant: Jessica Hamlin. Manager of Public Programs & Outreach: Kelly Shindler. Web Producer: Ana Otero. Senior Development Officer: Beth Allen. Development Associate: Sara Simonson. Development Coordinator: Erin Cesta & Katherine Payne.

Interns: Stephanie Abraitis, Alex Agnant, Gabriella della Croce, Nora Herting, Milena Hoegsberg, Rives Kitchell, Katie McCurry, Simone Otenaike, Karoline Pfeiffer, Nick Pozek, Carolina Puente, Muña Qamar, Bettina Riccio Henry, Meg Scally, Karen Seapker, Peter Sebeckis, Lucy Strong, & Kelly Williamson.

Public Relations: Goodman Media International. Station Relations: De Shields Associates, Inc. Legal Counsel: Albert Gottesman. Bookkeeper: Marea Alverio-Chaveco & Valerie Riley. Travel Agent: Lita Gottesman.

Major underwriting for Season 4 of Art in the Twenty-First Century is provided by National Endowment for the Arts, PBS, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Bloomberg, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Bagley Wright Fund, and W.L.S. Spencer Foundation.

Closed captionsAvailable in English, German, Romanian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian

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Licensing

Interested in showing this film in an exhibition or public screening? To license this video please visit Licensing & Reproduction.

An-My Lê

An-My Lê’s photographs and films examine the impact, consequences, and representation of war. Whether in color or black-and-white, her pictures frame a tension between the natural landscape and its violent transformation into battlefields. Suspended between the formal traditions of documentary and staged photography, Lê’s work explores the disjunction between wars as historical events and the ubiquitous representation of war in contemporary entertainment, politics, and collective consciousness.


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“For me, being able to go back to Vietnam and make those pictures was a way to reconnect with a homeland, or this idea of what a homeland is.”

An-My Lê


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Interview

War and Aesthetics

Artist An-My Lê discusses her process of aestheticizing war, and the thinking behind her choice of black and white photography.


1:08
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An-My Lê

4:02
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An-My Lê

5:25
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An-My Lê