Rouse Visiting Artist Lecture: An-My Lê, Maps and Legends: Photography Between Histories and Beyond Borders

Manning the Rail, USS Tortuga, Java Sea, 2010, Events Ashore.
When: April/1,/2025
Tuesday
06:30PM – 08:00PM
Livestream Information |
---|
A livestream player will be available at the top of this page when the event begins. Online viewers are encouraged to submit questions using the Q+A button.
Registration and login are not required. Closed captioning can be enabled by clicking on the “CC” icon at the bottom of the livestream player. |
Please RSVP to receive reminders about the event.
Event Description
Internationally renowned photographer An-My Lê seeks “to photograph the landscape in such a way that it suggests a universal history, a personal history, a history of culture.” In this lecture, Lê presents two new series of recent photographs, Dark Star and Grey Wolf, continuing her exploration of the contradictory nature of the manifest and the sublime within the contemporary American landscape, and the latter as a present-day locus of technology, power and ambition. In Lê’s work, scale is both temporal and historical, encompassing themes of displacement, war, memory, and resilience. These are present in her earliest black and white pictures of Vietnam (1994-1998) in which she returned to a scarred homeland as a political refugee, to her pictures of war re-enactors in the southern U.S. (Small Wars, 1999-2002), to staged military training exercises in the American desert (29 Palms, 2003-04), to her more recent lens on polarization in the United States through a series of historical fragments (Silent General, 2015 to today). With extraordinary consideration of history and culture, Lê’s view of her subjects often incorporates an elevated perspective to achieve its signature precision and ethical neutrality. In zooming out to look closer, her stepped-back “proscenium framing” brings into crystal clear vision her observations and stories, not unlike layers of a history painting.
Speaker
An-My Lê is an internationally renowned photographer based in New York. Her work often addresses the impact of war on culture and the environment. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Art, the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award. Lê’s work has been exhibited widely, including in the Whitney Biennial, Taipei Biennial, Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Tate Modern. In 2020, Lê’s major exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art traveled to the Amon Carter Museum and the Milwaukee Art Museum, with a comprehensive catalog published by Aperture. Between Two Rivers/Giữa hai giòng sông/Entre deux rivières, a 30-year survey of her career, including her forays into film, textiles, and installation was recently shown at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Lê is currently the Charles Franklin Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor in the Arts at Bard College, New York.
Harvard University welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you would like to request accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact the Public Programs Office at (617) 496-2414 or [email protected] in advance of your participation or visit. Requests for American Sign Language interpreters and/or CART providers should be made at least two weeks in advance. Please note that the University will make every effort to secure services, but that services are subject to availability.
#GSDEVENTS