For nine years, the photographer An-My Lê tracked her prey: the United States military. Designed to face down conventional enemies, it hasn’t won a war since 1991. Still, it remains the most visually impressive fighting force in the world.
Lê’s photographs possess a disarming lucidity, but with a twist that makes peculiar demands on the viewer. Her images from Events Ashore allow the pristine idealism of the military recruits to sit alongside the acknowledgment of the extraordinary violence her subjects have been trained to inflict.
A caste apart from American society, the US military has different codes, different discipline and a different economic system. Lê serenely documents how it thrusts its way into every part of the globe. She captures soldiers as they disembark at ports, polish fighter jets, provide earthquake relief, lounge in bars, and embed in lush landscapes.
The sunbathers on the beach here could be sybarites from a Patricia Highsmith novel, until we look closer. The opening photograph of the sailor seems like a standard fulfillment of duty, though undercut by the knowledge that there are the likes of Chelsea Manning and Aaron Bushnell among the rank and file.
