What do you think?
Rate this book
Events Ashore
An-My Lê's first publication, Small Wars, brought together three bodies of black-and-white work (Vietnam/i>, Small Wars/i> and 29 Palms/i>), offering a trilogy of tautly rendered examinations of landscape, war, memory and spectacle. This earlier work examined the troubling beauty that both informs and binds Hollywood evocations and photojournalistic documents of conflict to Lê's childhood experiences in wartime Vietnam. Events Ashore continues her exploration of the American military, a pursuit both personal and civic. With this body of work, however, Lê emerges as a master colorist, employing the compositional precision and subtlety of palette of the large-format color negative to render the kaleidoscopic shifts of terrain and sudden intrusions of beauty, atmosphere and psychology within her observations of the military at work.
Events Ashore began when the artist was invited to photograph US naval ships preparing for deployment to Iraq, the first in a series of visits to battleships, humanitarian missions in Africa and Asia, training exercises, and scientific missions in the Arctic and Antarctic. As Lê explains, these trips allowed her to study close at hand the military's noncombat activities, becoming "a launching point for an examination of the U.S. military on the global stage across oceans and borders as a symbol of conflict, an echo of the age of exploration, and an unlikely (and unsung) force in the unfolding environmental crisis This work is as much about my perspective and personal history as a political refugee from Vietnam as it is about the vast geopolitical forces and conflicts that shape these landscapes." With this body of work, Lê has assembled a visual narrative of hardware, personnel, destinations, and points of contact that constitutes the American military experience--and influence.
Events Ashore began when the artist was invited to photograph US naval ships preparing for deployment to Iraq, the first in a series of visits to battleships, humanitarian missions in Africa and Asia, training exercises, and scientific missions in the Arctic and Antarctic. As Lê explains, these trips allowed her to study close at hand the military's noncombat activities, becoming "a launching point for an examination of the U.S. military on the global stage across oceans and borders as a symbol of conflict, an echo of the age of exploration, and an unlikely (and unsung) force in the unfolding environmental crisis This work is as much about my perspective and personal history as a political refugee from Vietnam as it is about the vast geopolitical forces and conflicts that shape these landscapes." With this body of work, Lê has assembled a visual narrative of hardware, personnel, destinations, and points of contact that constitutes the American military experience--and influence.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published October 31, 2014
7 people want to read
About the author
An-My Lê
7 books1 followerAn-My Lê (born in Saigon, Vietnam, 1960) is a Vietnamese American photographer, filmmaker, author, and the Charles Franklin Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor in the Arts at Bard College. Lê came to the United States as a political refugee at age fifteen. She received a grant to return to her homeland just after US-Vietnamese relations were formally restored, and traveled there several times between 1994 and 1997. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation, and her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Most recently a major retrospective of her work was organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She is based in New York.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.