True Bearing

An-My Lê is an artist whose photographs of landscapes transformed by war and other forms of military activity blur the boundaries between fact and fiction.  Her carefully composed photographs are richly layered with meaning.  Lê’s images combine the documentary and the conceptual, creating a neutral perspective that exposes the essential ambiguity of the medium of photography.

Lê first became interested in Coast Guard activities in the Arctic as part of her larger examination of the U.S. military’s maritime and coastal operations throughout the world.  Before receiving the GSA commission, she travelled twice on USCGC Healy to photograph the crew’s missions in the Bering Sea.

As a landscape photographer, Lê’s primary tool is the language of scale.  She is as interested in the larger scale that gives context to human endeavors and activities as she is in the smaller environments that surround individuals, and which suggest the personal and psychological histories of portraiture.

Lê’s goal for this installation of 51 photographs is to convey a sense of the complex nature of the Coast Guard’s mission, the vastness of the landscape in which it operates, and the multiplicity of individuals and roles it comprises.