Vietnam-born photographer honored as US ‘genius’
Vietnamese-American photographer An My Le has just won the US$0.5mln 2012 MacArthur Fellowship, also known as “Genius Grants”, one of most valuable awards honoring varied creative works in the US.
This year’s award is given to 23 people from various fields, including science, literature, music, fine arts, education, and film.
An My Le, 52, was presented this award for her photographs, which "approach the subjects of war and landscape from new perspectives to create images that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction and are rich with layers of meaning,” the judges say.
The winner will receive a cash prize of US$500,000, paid as quarterly installments over five years to pursue their creative activities in the absence of any specific obligations.
The annual MacArthur Fellowship is an award given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to typically 20 to 40 United States citizens or residents, who "show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work".
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| A photo in her "29 Palms" project |
People are nominated anonymously by a body of nominators who submit recommendations to a small selection committee of about a dozen people, also anonymous.
Before An My Le, two other Americans with Vietnamese origin won the award in 1987 and 2007, respectively.
An My Le, who is currently living and working in New York, was born in Saigon (former name of Ho Chi Minh City) in 1960. In 1975, An My Le and her family settled in the US.
She received BAS and MS degrees in biology from Stanford University (1981, 1985) and an MFA from Yale University (1993).
Her photographs and films examine the impact, consequences, and representation of war. Whether in color or black-and-white, her pictures frame a tension between the natural landscape and its violent transformation into battlefields.
Among her well-known photography projects are "Vietnam" (1994–98), in which Le’s memories of a war-torn countryside are reconciled with the contemporary landscape, "Small Wars" (1999–2002), and "29 Palms" (2003–04), in which United States Marines preparing for deployment play-act scenarios in a virtual Middle East in the California desert.
Her work explores the disjunction between wars as historical events and the ubiquitous representation of war in contemporary entertainment, politics, and collective consciousness.
During her career, she has received many awards, including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1997) and the New York Foundation for the Arts (1996).
In 2006 alone, she had three major exhibitions at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2006), Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2006), and International Center of Photography Triennial (2006).
Piror to the year, she had her photographs featured at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City in 2002 and the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1997.