WEBVTT

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An-My Lê:
I think I had very conflicted ideas about

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the military.

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It was something that drew me

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but at the same time it was something that
was repellent

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because of you know what had happened in Vietnam.

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I'm completely fascinated by the military structure.

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So the idea of studying the preparation of
war became very interesting.

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I think on my own I, I don't think I would ever
gain access to the military

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and learn about all these things.

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And so the camera is a pretext.

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My camera's wood.

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It's an old Deardorff.

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It's a substantial and cumbersome camera.

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Because it's so cumbersome it makes me make
a particular type of picture.

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I think it forces me to resolve questions.

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So for example, photographing military exercises,

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I'm interested in what I have to go through
to make it work.

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And I think it forces me to make a particular
type of picture.

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Without really being conscious about it,

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I think I've always tried to understand what
is the meaning of war

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and what does it really mean to live through
times of turbulence like that,

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and I think a lot of those questions sort
of fuel my work.

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When I first made the pictures in Vietnam,

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I was not at all ready to even deal with the war.

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War was part of life for us.

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And I've gone to school as a seven year-old
and arriving

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and finding the front gate of my school in smoke,

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because a mortar had just fallen there you
know at 5:30 in the morning.

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So it...it's something that we take with a stride.

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I think it was affecting our parents a lot more.

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As soon as I got to Vietnam,

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I realized that I was not so interested in
the specific psychology of each person,

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but I was more interested in the activities,

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what they do and how that activity is splayed
onto the landscape.

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It's that beauty that I wanted to embrace
in my work.

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For me, being able to go back to Vietnam and
make those pictures

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was a way to reconnect with a homeland or
this idea of what a homeland is.

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You know when you live in exile, things like
smell and memories,

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stories you hear from your childhood,

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all those things take on such importance,

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things that really connect you to the land.

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And unfortunately pictures don't smell,

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but if I could do that you know it would be
about smells as well.

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I think each body of work grows out of the
next one

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because I think you resolve something and
then you feel ready,

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to move on, to tackle another issue.

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And certainly, after Vietnam it was obvious
that I had not tackled the issue of war.

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Working with the re-enactors just became such
an opportunity.

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John Pilson:
The first time she went down,

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she went down by herself and I guess I was not....

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That was...that was one time, on all the things
she's done,

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that was like the one time I didn't....

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I was just concerned, you know,

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cause she didn't know anything about these guys

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and she found them on the Internet.

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And the whole idea of she's going down to
go out into the woods for a weekend with a bunch…

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bunch of, kind of paramilitary guys.

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An-My Lê:
Working with the re-enactors was very difficult

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because they had their own activity

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and I needed to interrupt them,

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to set up my own pictures.

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And at one point there was this issue of well,

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should I completely direct them?

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Should I hire them?

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Should I hire actors?

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And uh, I'm...I'm really glad that I,

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I didn't because I think not having complete
control was…

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was very interesting.

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I think it created these moments of uncertainty.

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Black and white was always my choice

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because of my interest in the drawings of things.

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In this picture for example, you know,

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it was the drawing of the branches coming
down, the drawing of the creek.

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We added the smoke.

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Uhm, you know this one Special Force guy or
re-enactor hiding behind this.

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So it was very clear in my mind what the drawing
of the landscape would be.

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In color it's not so clear I think in terms of space

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and then it would be about the space that's
in between the green and uh,

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the actual ridge here.

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I think in black and white I would have thought of...

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I think I would have made a slightly different picture.

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I'm not sure how to explain it.

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I think this was a black and white picture
that I made in color,

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because I was interested in all the lines
here and the,

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the ladder effect here of the ridge.

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And I think it was only afterwards that I
noticed how beautiful the gradation of greens

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was

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from the bottom to the top.

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I think of myself as a landscape photographer.

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I think my main goal is to try to photograph
landscape in such a way

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so that history could be suggested through
the landscape,

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whether industrial history or my personal
history.

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I try to stay away from light that's too dramatic.

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And I try not to use light too much as some
kind of dramatic counterpoint.

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I think I'd rather have something else--at
that element of drama.

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And I was very distraught when the war started
in March of 2003

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and I felt my heart going out for the soldiers,

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the young men and women who were being sent to Iraq.

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My immediate impulse was to go to Iraq.

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And when that did not work out

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and I saw pictures of marines training in
Twenty-nine Palms, I thought,

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well Twenty-nine Palms could be a stand-in for Iraq.

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And why not.

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When I'm working with the military, I still
think of landscape.

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Scale is also important to me because it shows
how insignificant we are

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and especially with the military,

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no matter how advanced, how hard we work,

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it's still about transporting, you know,

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all of these incredible new tanks across vast
landscapes.

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That's what you're up against and…

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and it's about really trying to capture that.

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And it's about also really trying to make
sense of it

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and that's why it's important to have an activity.

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And I think I immediately realized that the
kind of work that I make is not the standard,

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traditional, political work.

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You know it's not agitprop.

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And I think war is very complicated, it's
not black and white.

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But at the same time, what it is meant to
do is...is just horrible.

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And I think that's why the work seems ambiguous
and it's...it's meant to be.

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I am not categorically against war, but I think
we need to, you know,

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try to avoid it as much as possible.