AN-MY LÊ:

The day the war started in Iraq in 2003, I became extremely distraught. Being an artist, I thought of ways to deal with that. 

I came across pictures of the Marines training in a Marine base called 29 Palms, outside of Los Angeles, near Joshua Tree. And the landscape looked like parts of Afghanistan. And after working with the reenactors, I thought, “Well, a stand-in for Afghanistan could just be great.” So I called up the public relations department at 29 Palms, and— and asked for permission to come and photograph there.

Even though it was training, it was for real. The scale is enormous. You’re dealing with fighter jet planes, you’re dealing with tanks moving across the land.  And so the level of intensity was multiplied a hundredfold. You could really see that it was training for war, that it was a set, that it was theater.

So I became interested in looking at the landscape in terms of strategy. You’re looking at a field, and it’s a field. But if you look at it in military terms, there’s an exit and entry point.

It’s really more using the landscape as a place to contemplate a war. And I love nineteenth century photography. That’s what inspires me. And it’s part of that tradition.

So it comes down to how do you incorporate that in the landscape? And— and it’s about trying to find ways to layer the description of the land with my interest in culture, my interest in architecture, and then also my interest in all of the current issues that people are concerned with.

But I think in the end, I’m really trying to understand the effect of war on my life. And I’m just using landscape photography to try to answer those questions.