Continue playing

(Time remaining: )

Play from beginning

Continue playing "{{ controller.videos[controller.getVideo(controller.currentVideo)].segmentParentTitle}}"

{{controller.videos[controller.getVideo(controller.currentVideo)].title}} has ended.

{{ currentTime | date:'HH:mm:ss':'+0000' }} / {{ totalTime | date:'HH:mm:ss':'+0000' }}

{{ currentTime | date:'mm:ss':'+0000' }} / {{ totalTime | date:'mm:ss':'+0000' }}

Add to watchlist

Remove from watchlist

Video unavailable

Becoming an ArtistAn-My Lê

Extended Play

June 5, 2008

When An-My Lê describes her transition from biology student to artist, she claims that she really didn’t know what she should do. “As any responsible child of an immigrant, I knew I should do something that would be more practical. My brothers were engineers and went to business school, and I thought engineering would be too dry; so I thought, why not biology and become a doctor?” Lê recalls, while printing a photograph from the series Trap Rock (2006) in her New York studio.

Within her photography and films, Lê examines the ramifications and representations of war, reflecting on U.S. foreign policy’s role in her own life as both a perpetrator of violence and as a savior.

Credits

Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Lizzie Donahue. Artwork courtesy: An-Me Lê.

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

Translate this video

Through the Art21 Translation Project, multilingual audiences from around the globe can contribute translations, making Art21 films more accessible worldwide.

Licensing

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

Photography

Being an Artist

An-My Lê was born in 1960 in Saigon, Vietnam, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BAS and an MS from Stanford University in 1981 and 1985, and an MFA from Yale University in 1993. Documenting former sites of battle, military training exercises, and Vietnam War reenactments, An My Lê’s photography considers how conflict lingers in the landscape and how media shapes our perception of it.

An-My Lê

4:02

Add to watchlist

"29 Palms"

An-My Lê

5:25

Add to watchlist

"Trap Rock"

An-My Lê

14:01

Add to watchlist

An-My Lê in "Protest"

“I was allowed to take a non-science course, and I wanted to take drawing but it was filled up. So I took photography. And immediately, I realized that it was something that was truly amazing and that it could really change my life.”

An-My Lê

Gallery