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.