An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain Exhibition

"I am not a war photographer. I find it much more interesting and much more slippery to work with a side-glance view."

—An-My Lê

The Carnegie Museum received a grant to support the exhibition An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain, the first comprehensive survey of the politically charged work of photographer An-My Lê (American, born Vietnam, 1960). Featuring over 100 photographs, this exhibition presents seven of Lê’s series, providing insight into her evocative images that draw on a landscape tradition to address the complexity of war.

Intimate and timely, this expansive exhibition explores the intricacies of armed combat through the work of a photographer who lived through the Vietnam War. Through Lê’s lens, viewers are exposed to military training, maneuvers, and reenactments, and are invited to question their own relationship to, and complicity in, conflict.

An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain also presents new photographs from Lê’s ongoing series Silent General. These new works grapple with the legacy of America’s Civil War and connect to the complexities of our current socio-political moment. Taking inspiration from Walt Whitman’s autobiographical Specimen Days, the photographs probe the ways in which past conflicts influence and shape the present landscape in America.

While Lê is represented in many major museum collections, An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain is the first ever survey of her work in an American museum.