Biography
"My main goal is to try to photograph landscape in such a way that it suggests a universal history, a personal history, a history of culture." -Lê
An-My Lê was born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1960. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She 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.
As a teenager Lê fled Vietnam with her family in 1975. They eventually settled in the United States as refugees. Her work often addresses the impact of war on culture and on the environment. Lê says her "main goal is to try to photograph landscape in such a way that it suggests a universal history, a personal history, a history of culture."
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.
"My main goal is to try to photograph landscape in such a way that it suggests a universal history, a personal history, a history of culture." -Lê