An-My Lê (born 1960) is a Vietnamese American photographer, filmmaker, author and professor at

Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains within the Hudson River Historic District ...

. Her work is often focused on photographing subjects involving war, landscape, and how the two interact within military combat. She is a 2012

MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 117 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.6 billion and ...

Fellow and has received the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1997), the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program Award (2007), and the Tiffany Comfort Foundation Fellowship (2010). Her work was included in the 2017

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was held in 1973. It is considered ...

Life and work

An-My Lê was born in Saigon, South Vietnam, in 1960. She fled from Vietnam in 1975, and after shuttling through military bases in the Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, finally settling in Sacramento, California. She studied biology at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, receiving her BA in 1981 and her MA in 1985. She attended

Yale School of Art The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Master of Fine Arts, Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in g ...

, receiving her MFA in photography in 1993. In 1994, Lê visited Vietnam for the first time in almost 20 years, this is where she would capture photographs for her photo series, ''Viêt Nam'' (1994–98). ''Viêt Nam'' consists of black and white photos of a schoolgirl field worker and several captures of the landscape. In 1999, she started her project ''Small Wars'' (1999-2002). Lê took various shots of action and solitude during a Vietnam War re-enactment, and as a condition for photographing the "battles", she was required to participate herself, assuming the role of a Viet Cong sniper. Lê then began her work on ''29 Palms'' (2003–04), the site of production being a Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in California, where training and preparation of American troops take place. Lê had the opportunity to capture the rehearsals that on at the center during America's military preparation for the wars in Iran and Afghanistan. Her book ''Small Wars'' was published in 2005. In November 2014, her second book, ''Events Ashore'', was published by

Aperture In optics, the aperture of an optical system (including a system consisting of a single lens) is the hole or opening that primarily limits light propagated through the system. More specifically, the entrance pupil as the front side image o ...

. ''Events Ashore'' depicts a 9-year photographic exploration of the US Navy working throughout the world. The project 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. In 2006, Lê created ''Trap Rock,'' a project commissioned for the Dia Art Foundation, where she photographed a rock quarry North of New York City. Since 2015, she has been expanding on her newest project, ''Silent General'' (2015-) which reflects the current climate and culture within American politics and society. This project was prompted by the 2015 mass church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, and ties in historic and contemporary issues such as the Civil War, racial tension, and the erasure of history are prevalent throughout the series.

Awards and grants

*1993: Blair Dickinson Memorial Award, Yale University School of Art *1995: CameraWorks Inc. fellowship *1996: New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in photography *1997: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship *2004: John Gutmann Photography Fellowship *2007: National Science Foundation, Antarctic Artists and Writers Program Award *2010: Tiffany Comfort Foundation *2012: John D. and Catherina T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship

Books

*''Small Wars.'' New York:

, 2005. Essay by Richard B. Woodward. Interview by

Hilton Als Hilton Als (born 1960) is an American writer and theater critic. He is a teaching professor at the University of California, Berkeley, an associate professor of writing at Columbia University and a staff writer and theater critic for ''The New Yo ...

. *''Events Ashore.'' New York:

, 2014. Essay by Geoff Dyer. *''An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain.'' New York:

, 2020. *''An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers.'' New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2023

Exhibitions

*2017

*2023-2024
''An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers/Giữa hai giòng sông/Entre deux rivières''

References

External links

*An-My Lê's Website
Official siteThislongcentury.comBlog.art21.orgDisart.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Le, An-My 1960 births Living people MacArthur Fellows Bard College faculty Stanford University alumni Yale School of Art alumni People from Ho Chi Minh City Vietnamese emigrants to the United States 20th-century American photographers 21st-century American photographers 20th-century American women photographers 21st-century American women photographers American women academics