An-My Lê: Pt II

II.


US Marine Expeditionary Unit, Shoalwater Bay, Australia (2005), from the series “Events Ashore.”

ART iT: You mentioned your project “Small Wars,” which was shot with Vietnam War reenactors in the US. As I understand it, you were actually participating in the reenactments.

AML: It was the requirement for me to join. There was a small group, and in order to be invited, I had to participate. At the time I felt I had to do whatever was necessary to get the pictures, but with perspective I think it was kind of empowering to be there and participate and to take control, organizing the sniper girl scenarios – I did so many different versions of it, and the reenactors complied, even though they hated being shot at.
The big decision for me was to not recreate the horrors of Vietnam. I was more interested in the psychology of the reenactment itself, the myth of the war and how it’s perpetuated and still so raw and unresolved in the American popular imagination. You walk into a bookstore in the US and see so many books on Vietnam, and of course there is a long list of Hollywood movies that I grew up watching.

ART iT: How did the reenactments work? For example, there is a huge reenactment culture for the American Civil War, which is based on precisely documented movements from the actual engagements, like at Gettysburg and so on, but with Vietnam, I don’t imagine there would be the same readymade structure.

AML: Right. These guys would just come up with activities rather than recreating specific events. They would say, this weekend we’re doing reconnaissance patrols, and one side would be the GIs and the other would be the ARVNs or the Viet Cong, and then they would stage some kind of skirmish or attack. They would work me into the scenarios, like somebody would be patrolling a village and then I would ambush them – they would love that. They found Vietnam-era jets and staged the rescue of a pilot, which I set up and photographed. In a way it was an introduction to the military for me, even though it was so jokey. I think most of them had no sense of how physically and mentally rigorous it actually was. And the question is, do Vietnam vets actually participate in reenactments? No, of course not, because it was too traumatic. Who would want to relive it? So in some way it was like a bunch of boys getting together and playing Cowboys and Indians over the weekend. Of course, it’s actually much more complicated and interesting than that, because of their intense fascination with military history and culture and their obsession with bringing everything to life.

ART iT: So it was more like an exercise in wish fulfillment or world building?

AML: They would script it: you guys come here and then we’ll attack you and there’ll be an ambush. It was like a movie more than anything else. We didn’t use paintballs. We would just make shooting gestures at each other and pretend to fall. I shot many of them who wouldn’t fall down, and would then pretend that they got me first. For them, it was more about coming together and exchanging things they owned and wearing the gear – the right watch, the right haircut, no cellphones. So it lasted a number of years and then it naturally fell apart. It was really perverse in a way, because I realized that I was the real thing for them. I was a real Vietnamese and I was wearing the Viet Cong outfit. I was a female guerilla and it got to be subversive.

ART iT: In that sense, although you’re a landscape photographer, I see parallels with other photographers who insert themselves into a subculture and document it from the inside.

AML: Sure. Nan Goldin photographed her friends and close-knit community. In Tulsa, Larry Clark photographed his close friends’ drug use. I guess it’s something like that.
Sometimes people ask me about access and the military culture. I think deep down, from having had to move to different places and to adapt every time, it’s a challenge I welcome. When you board a ship or aircraft carrier, you know you have to do your work, so the challenge is how to fit in, or how to get what you want without becoming high maintenance.

ART iT: Is this notion of embeddedness intrinsic to the camera itself, regardless of whether it’s with the military or any other group?

AML: I think so. The more embedded you are, the more people relax around you. I mean, because I use a large-format camera, I had to set up a lot of the pictures. I couldn’t be spontaneous. I had to direct things. But to get inspired, I need to see something, or at least the beginning of something. Sometimes I bring an idea with me and use the people or situation to recreate it. But often I would be directly inspired by what I saw before me, because I didn’t know that much, and I had to learn on the go. So it’s important to be a fly on the wall.

ART iT: With “Small Wars,” the sniper girl photograph you mentioned earlier was a kind of punctum moment for me. In the photograph, we see the girl from behind as she is about to shoot at a patrol of GIs coming around a clump of vegetation. Compared with other pictures that seem to be implicitly sympathetic to the GIs, it’s a bit of a shock to realize that now the camera is on the sniper’s side: the camera has no loyalty.

AML: Yes, because up until then there is no perpetrator. For me it was mainly inspired by what I saw down there. I did have a list in my head of different things I wanted to shoot, and having been so marked by Full Metal Jacket, the scenario of the sniper girl was high on my list. But it was difficult to make it happen.
Overall, it took many trials to realize that the landscape had to be interesting. In the beginning, it was difficult to work with the men because their priority was reenactments, not posing for pictures, so it was always a negotiation. I always had to work fast and it seemed like everything was sloppy, but I quickly realized that the landscape had to stand on its own before I could even plan on incorporating any military action, and that became the mode of operation. I became a landscape scout.

ART iT: In previous interviews you’ve spoken eloquently about different inspirations or sources for your own practice, but as you moved into shooting “29 Palms” and “Events Ashore,” did you start researching war photography in an intensive way?

AML: I always look at what’s on the front page of the New York Times. I look at how war is covered in other places. I think most of my research had more to do with understanding the idea of beauty and its relationship to war and destruction. It was a difficult issue for me to come to terms with. What is the role of beauty? Does it take away from the work? Can it be there to complicate the work? Am I using it in the right way? While working on “Small Wars,” I learned about the work done by North Vietnamese combat photographers, and the importance of the landscape and the element of beauty in their pictures. This was a big discovery for me. I was interested in understanding the sublime. There were things I saw that were extraordinarily beautiful but highly complicated.
Also, with “Events Ashore,” being at sea was a new element for me. How do you photograph the ocean? All of a sudden there’s a horizon line, so how do you deal with that? It’s difficult. I’ve always loved Le Gray and Sugimoto, who keep a very consistent horizon line. In the beginning, I thought I would just photograph some naval activities at sea and stop there, but as I started traveling I realized the scope of what the US military was doing and how mixed up all the activities are. Some of it is humanitarian, and some of it is information gathering, some of it is just about presence. It’s complicated and not quite clear what they’re doing.

Pt I | III

An-My Lê: Fires on the Plain

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