Most art photographers understand and often benefit from or engage with the fact that their medium plays a role in journalism, as evidence, propagand… - An-My Lê

At this time of crisis, I find great comfort in returning to nature, the wilderness, the richness and vast scale of the land. It has shaped the American identity; circling back to the landscape gives me hope for the future.

I am acutely aware of the complex role Vietnam plays, as both history and myth, in the country I have adopted as my own and in the culture I have raised my children. I can’t say I embrace every American characterisation of Vietnam. But I see the Hollywood clichés, the lasting psychic scars and even the cheap fetishes as expressions of something very real and very human. Vietnam remains an unavoidable and unresolved subject. As history, place and subject, it is still unfolding.

For me, the landscape has always been the constant in my work. I work with scale as a way to give context to human endeavors, military endeavors, and the history of power. In the end, Vietnam has endured many battles and gone through so many changes. The Chinese invasion, the Japanese occupation, the colonialism of the French, the Indochina War, the Americans—the constancy was always the landscape. And people change, cultures change over time, but there is something about the land. Even as our world modernizes, there is a certain consistency, a certain authenticity.