Artist An-My Lê will discuss her large-format camera photography in a 6 p.m. March 28 presentation at Sheldon Museum of Art.
The talk will include Karen Irvine, curator and associate director of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography. Lê and Irvine will explore “An-My Lê: 29 Palms,” an exhibition on display at the Sheldon.
With a large-format camera, much like those used by 19th-century photographers to capture vast landscapes and to document the Civil War, Lê makes images that reveal the complex relationships between military personnel and the natural environments in which they work. For the Sheldon exhibition, Lê’s photographs feature training exercises at 29 Palms, California, and show the epic landscape of the American West in its role of preparing Marines to manage the terrain of Iraq and Afghanistan.
“In the sense that An-My Lê identifies as a landscape photographer, her images in ‘29 Palms’ offer not just a view on war games and military exercises,” said Todd Tubutis, Sheldon’s associate director. “The photographs also slow us down to consider the landscape as witness in a very long history of human conflict. Just as the marines are playing roles in hypothetical scenarios, the desert itself becomes an actor in the ongoing theatre of war.”
Lê’s work as an artist is marked by her own experience of war and dislocation, having left conflict-ravaged Saigon as a 15-year-old refugee. Currently a professor of photography at Bard College, Lê holds degrees from Stanford and Yale universities. She is the recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, 1996; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1997; and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 2012. Her recent work was chosen for inclusion in the 2017 Whitney Biennial.
For more information on exhibitions at the Sheldon, click here.
