An-My Lê: I think I had very conflicted ideas about
the military.
It was something that drew me
but at the same time it was something that was repellent
because of you know what had happened in Vietnam.
I'm completely fascinated by the military structure.
So the idea of studying the preparation of war became very interesting.
I think on my own I, I don't think I would ever gain access to the military
and learn about all these things.
And so the camera is a pretext.
My camera's wood.
It's an old Deardorff.
It's a substantial and cumbersome camera.
Because it's so cumbersome it makes me make a particular type of picture.
I think it forces me to resolve questions.
So for example, photographing military exercises,
I'm interested in what I have to go through to make it work.
And I think it forces me to make a particular type of picture.
Without really being conscious about it,
I think I've always tried to understand what is the meaning of war
and what does it really mean to live through times of turbulence like that,
and I think a lot of those questions sort of fuel my work.
When I first made the pictures in Vietnam,
I was not at all ready to even deal with the war.
War was part of life for us.
And I've gone to school as a seven year-old and arriving
and finding the front gate of my school in smoke,
because a mortar had just fallen there you know at 5:30 in the morning.
So it...it's something that we take with a stride.
I think it was affecting our parents a lot more.
As soon as I got to Vietnam,
I realized that I was not so interested in the specific psychology of each person,
but I was more interested in the activities,
what they do and how that activity is splayed onto the landscape.
It's that beauty that I wanted to embrace in my work.
For me, being able to go back to Vietnam and make those pictures
was a way to reconnect with a homeland or this idea of what a homeland is.
You know when you live in exile, things like smell and memories,
stories you hear from your childhood,
all those things take on such importance,
things that really connect you to the land.
And unfortunately pictures don't smell,
but if I could do that you know it would be about smells as well.
I think each body of work grows out of the next one
because I think you resolve something and then you feel ready,
to move on, to tackle another issue.
And certainly, after Vietnam it was obvious that I had not tackled the issue of war.
Working with the re-enactors just became such an opportunity.
John Pilson: The first time she went down,
she went down by herself and I guess I was not....
That was...that was one time, on all the things she's done,
that was like the one time I didn't....
I was just concerned, you know,
cause she didn't know anything about these guys
and she found them on the Internet.
And the whole idea of she's going down to go out into the woods for a weekend with a bunch…
bunch of, kind of paramilitary guys.
An-My Lê: Working with the re-enactors was very difficult
because they had their own activity
and I needed to interrupt them,
to set up my own pictures.
And at one point there was this issue of well,
should I completely direct them?
Should I hire them?
Should I hire actors?
And uh, I'm...I'm really glad that I,
I didn't because I think not having complete control was…
was very interesting.
I think it created these moments of uncertainty.
Black and white was always my choice
because of my interest in the drawings of things.
In this picture for example, you know,
it was the drawing of the branches coming down, the drawing of the creek.
We added the smoke.
Uhm, you know this one Special Force guy or re-enactor hiding behind this.
So it was very clear in my mind what the drawing of the landscape would be.
In color it's not so clear I think in terms of space
and then it would be about the space that's in between the green and uh,
the actual ridge here.
I think in black and white I would have thought of...
I think I would have made a slightly different picture.
I'm not sure how to explain it.
I think this was a black and white picture that I made in color,
because I was interested in all the lines here and the,
the ladder effect here of the ridge.
And I think it was only afterwards that I noticed how beautiful the gradation of greens
was
from the bottom to the top.
I think of myself as a landscape photographer.
I think my main goal is to try to photograph landscape in such a way
so that history could be suggested through the landscape,
whether industrial history or my personal history.
I try to stay away from light that's too dramatic.
And I try not to use light too much as some kind of dramatic counterpoint.
I think I'd rather have something else--at that element of drama.
And I was very distraught when the war started in March of 2003
and I felt my heart going out for the soldiers,
the young men and women who were being sent to Iraq.
My immediate impulse was to go to Iraq.
And when that did not work out
and I saw pictures of marines training in Twenty-nine Palms, I thought,
well Twenty-nine Palms could be a stand-in for Iraq.
And why not.
When I'm working with the military, I still think of landscape.
Scale is also important to me because it shows how insignificant we are
and especially with the military,
no matter how advanced, how hard we work,
it's still about transporting, you know,
all of these incredible new tanks across vast landscapes.
That's what you're up against and…
and it's about really trying to capture that.
And it's about also really trying to make sense of it
and that's why it's important to have an activity.
And I think I immediately realized that the kind of work that I make is not the standard,
traditional, political work.
You know it's not agitprop.
And I think war is very complicated, it's not black and white.
But at the same time, what it is meant to do is...is just horrible.
And I think that's why the work seems ambiguous and it's...it's meant to be.
I am not categorically against war, but I think we need to, you know,
try to avoid it as much as possible.