‘It’s Not Black and White’: Watch Vietnamese Photographer An-My Lê Make Images That Reveal the Complexity of War

The photographer An-My Lê
was born in 1960 in Saigon during the height of the Vietnam War.
She knew nothing else growing up. “War was a part of life for
us…it’s something we take in stride,” she told Art21 in an exclusive interview back
in 2007.

She and her parents fled Vietnam, eventually landing in the
United States as political refugees in 1975. Throughout her career,
however, war has never been far from her mind.
Although Lê describes
her work as “landscape photography,” the images she captures happen
to be almost exclusively the landscapes of war.

Using an old-fashioned Deardorff wooden camera, she travels to
witness military exercises, battles, and their aftermath. The tool
is “so cumbersome it makes me take a particular type of picture,”
she told Art21.

“I think my main goal is to try
to photograph landscape in such a way so that history could be
suggested through the landscape,” she says in the video, “whether
industrial history or my personal history.” Despite her fascination
with the military structure, she knows firsthand the traumatic
implications of war. “It’s very complicated, it’s not black and
white…and I think that’s why the work seems ambiguous,” Lê says.
“It’s meant to be.” 

Right now at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the most comprehensive
US survey of Lê’s work is on
view in “An-My Lê:
On Contested Terrain.” More than 100 photographs by the artist
document military training, maneuvers, and reenactments. By turning
her lens on the structure of the armed forces, we are able to see
the individuals at work behind the massive complex—and are forced
to reckon with our own feelings toward conflict.

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part
of Art21’s Art in the Twenty-First Century
series, below. “An-My Lê:
On Contested Terrain” is on view at the Carnegie Museum of Art
through July 26, 2020. 

This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration
between artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking
artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art
in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all
episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play
and learn about the organization’s educational programs
at Art21.org.

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Photographer An-My Lê Make Images That Reveal the Complexity of
War appeared first on artnet News.