Join a conversation with acclaimed New York–based photographer An-My Lê and MOCA Senior Curator Anna Katz.
Born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1960, Lê fled the country with her family in 1975 at the age of 15, resettling in the United States as a political refugee. Now based in Brooklyn, New York, Lê has developed a pioneering photographic practice that interrogates the role of landscape as both witness and participant in history. Her work has explored the lingering effects of war on both the natural environment and cultural narratives, creating bodies of work that redirect focus from the deeply personal to a distant view of history and time, while still embedding the immediacy and experience of the emotional contradictions of violence and awe.
Recently named as the High Desert Test Sites Fellow in 2025 —a year that marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon—Lê will return to the California desert, the site of her formative project 29 Palms (2003–2004), where she documented military training exercises staged in preparation for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lê will build upon her recent Dark Star series, initiated in 2024 at Mesa Verde National Park. Using a star-tracker—a device that allows the camera to follow the movement of the night sky—she’ll capture the starscape with striking clarity and dimensionality. This method reflects her continued interest in anchoring vast, historical timeframes within a single photographic exposure. During her fellowship, Lê will create new photographic works to be exhibited outdoors at A-Z West, the longtime experimental testing ground of HDTS founder Andrea Zittel. The works will be sited within Zittel’s Planar Pavilions, a permanent architectural installation supported by VIA Art Fund in 2018. Installed directly into the desert landscape with interpretive signage and free public access, the exhibition will extend the artist’s inquiries beyond traditional institutional walls.
About the Artist
An-My Lê was educated at Stanford University and at Yale University and has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Mac Arthur Foundation Fellowship (2012); the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2009); and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1997), amongst others. Lê is currently the Charles Franklin Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor in the Arts at Bard College, New York.
In 2023, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, organized Between Two Rivers /Giữ a hai giòng sông/Entre deux rivières, a survey of Lê’s work, and in 2021 a major exhibition opened at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and travelled to the Milwaukee Art Museum, WI, and the Amon Carter Museum of Art, TX. Other solo exhibitions of Lê's work have been presented at the Sheldon Art Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska (2017); Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg, Sweden (2015); Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland (2013); Dia: Beacon, New York (2008); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2008); and MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York (2002).
Her work has also been included in the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017) and the Taipei Biennial (2014 and 2006). She has been included in numerous international group shows including at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota (2019); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2017); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2016); National Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan (2015); Tate Modern, London (2014); Brooklyn Museum (2012); and the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010) amongst others.
Work by An-My Lê is currently on view at MOCA Grand Avenue in Fictions of Display through Jan. 4, 2026.
