29 Palms: Security and Stability Operations (Good Saddam)

An-My Lê

Object Label

An-My Lê, who arrived in the United States from Vietnam as a political refugee in 1975, explores the glorification of war in images of domestic and global U.S. military activity. Lê uses a large-format camera, similar to those employed by Civil War photographers, to document landscapes transformed by conflict. In the series 29 Palms, Lê photographs staged training sites built for American recruits in California’s Mojave Desert. Security and Stability Operations (Good Saddam) depicts former military housing transformed into a seemingly hostile environment when tagged with mock anti-American graffiti, examining the difference between simulated experiences and representations of actual war.

Caption

An-My Lê (American, born Vietnam, 1960). 29 Palms: Security and Stability Operations (Good Saddam), 2003–2004. Gelatin silver photograph, sheet: 26 1/2 × 38 in. (67.3 × 96.5 cm) frame: 27 7/8 × 39 3/8 × 1 1/2 in. (70.8 × 100 × 3.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Pamela and Arnold Lehman and Patricia and Randall Lewis, 2016.34. © An-My Lê.

Artist

An-My Lê

Title

29 Palms: Security and Stability Operations (Good Saddam)

Date

2003–2004

Medium

Gelatin silver photograph

Classification

Photograph

Dimensions

sheet: 26 1/2 × 38 in. (67.3 × 96.5 cm) frame: 27 7/8 × 39 3/8 × 1 1/2 in. (70.8 × 100 × 3.8 cm)

Credit Line

Gift of Pamela and Arnold Lehman and Patricia and Randall Lewis

Accession Number

2016.34

Rights

© An-My Lê

The Brooklyn Museum holds a non-exclusive license to reproduce images of this work of art from the rights holder named here. The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org. If you wish to contact the rights holder for this work, please email copyright@brooklynmuseum.org and we will assist if we can.

Have information?

Have information about an artwork? Contact us at

bkmcollections@brooklynmuseum.org.