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An-My Le: Small Wars | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Woodward
Creators: Hilton Als, Lesley Martin, An-my Le
Publisher: Aperture
Category: Book
List Price: $40.00
Buy New: $26.39
You Save: $13.61 (34%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 843519
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.4
Dimensions (in): 12.1 x 8.9 x 0.8
ISBN: 1931788820
Dewey Decimal Number: 770
EAN: 9781931788823
ASIN: 1931788820
Publication Date: October 15, 2005
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Shipping: International shipping available
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Product Description
In one of An-My Lan-My Le'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 Le 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. Essay by Richard B. Woodward. Interview by Hilton Als. Hardcover, 11.75 x 8.75 in./128 pgs / 75 duotones.
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| Customer Reviews:
Fictions and Truths: The Wonderful Photographs of An-My Le September 22, 2007
The other day I went to the university library only to discover that it was closed. My natural reaction was to head over to the Henry Art Gallery (in Seattle) to check out the new photography exhibit at the Henry called Small Wars by Vietnamese American photographer An-My Le. I didn't really know what to expect. I was very pleased that I absolutely loved the photographs. Le captures compelling the peformativity of war in her two series, "Small Wars" and "29 Palms." The former depicts images of Vietnam reenactors in Virginia and the latter military training and preparation for war in the Middle East on the 29 Palms military base. The images are deeply affective - emoting a sense of absurdity in the very plasticity of the convoluted term we all hear and throw around so often: war. Yet it is in this realization of the "un-realness" of "the wars" in the images that brings forth the disturbing and haunting aura of the word in any and all its permutations, spectral or not.
I just got a copy of _Small Wars_ by An-My Le (the book, published by the Aperture Foundation), and I've been reliving my experiences seeing the photographs at the Henry. Included in the book that was left out of the exhibit is a series of photographs taken in Vietnam, which serves as the book's opening. The semiotics of the arrangement of the photographs create a powerful narrative of the wars that Le personally navigates through, in all its fictions and truths. I highly recommend this book! It's fantastic!
Small Wars makes a Huge Impact October 29, 2005
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
An-My Le is a photography artist whose technical talent with the 5-by-7-view camera serves to capture her insightful, powerful imagery of landscapes that serve as matrix for the exploration of war and its impact on individuals. She combines images of actual wartime situations with 'practice/artificial' war training camps and the juxtaposition is startlingly surreal in capturing the reality of war.
Le fled Saigon at age 15 during the US exodus in 1975. For the first series in this stunning portfolio from 1994 to 1999 Le returned to Vietnam in an attempt to reconnect with her homeland. While there she photographed rural landscapes and urban views that, though still scarred by the incisors of the Vietnam War, are moments connecting her memory of home with the passage of time and change. The images are not manipulated, they are simply shot with clarity and in that vein such powerful photographs as 'Untitled Hanoi, 1995' is at once a stark apartment housing project 'fortress' in the foreground of which is the unfocused movement of young boys playing soccer while a central figure on a tree stump, in focus, stares off into what feels like a broken vision of hope.
In the period of 1999 to 2002 Le turned her camera toward the activities of a Virginia-based club self-named 'living historians' as the reenacted events from the Vietnam War (wargames these are) and in posing as a player, both civilian and enemy, she managed to penetrate the strange obsession with these men in somehow maintaining the myth of the war. 'GI' is a simple portrait of a reenactor at rest in battle regalia gazing into Le's camera with occult thoughts of intention. It is a very human testimony to the confusion the concept of war creates.
In 2003 and 2004 Le installed her camera and eye on the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms at a time when troops were training for Iraq and Afghanistan, absorbing not only the machinery of war but also the effects of landscape in the process of being altered by war machinery. Many of these photographs are serenely beautiful: 'Night Operations III' is a night photograph of aerial bombing in the desert, the streaks of mortar fire and illuminators create a balletic frenzy in the black sky over the miniaturized training camp facilities.
An-My Le takes her title 'SMALL WARS' of this profoundly impressive book from the military term for guerilla warfare - warfare that stretches from the military zone into the land. Her emphasis is on the landscape in each of these personal images, a factor that subtly focuses on the smallness and vulnerability of the subjects. She puts war into a context where few have ventured and the result is an intense experience and a book of substantive beauty. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, October 05
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