Small Wars

by An-My Lê (Photographer), Richard B. Woodward (Contributor), Hilton Als (Contributor)

In one of An-My Lê's photographs of American Marines training for Iraq in the Mojave desert, a group of barrels is marked with the phrase "Do Not Shoot." Obviously, the photographer didn't heed this warning, and the result is the most recent, timely series inof images in this compelling first monograph. Earlier photographs document a group of Vietnam War reenactors in South Carolina who, like their better-known Civil War counterparts, restage battles, training and the daily life of soldiers. An-My Lê is part of a new crop of artists who merge documentary and landscape photography to explore history and current events with an emotional subtext and from a very personal point of view.

Genres: Art

128 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2005

About the author

An-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.