An-My Lê: On Contested Terrain Print and Book Set

Aperture is pleased to release this very special limited-edition print by An-My Lê, accompanied by a signed copy of the artist’s survey, On Contested Terrain.

Taken for the series Silent General, this previously unpublished image is tranquil on the surface, yet in the context of the series, poetically alludes to the political polarization of the landscape along the border of Mexico and the United States. The series Silent General takes its title from Walt Whitman’s “Specimen Days” (1882), an autobiographical recounting of his time spent tending to wounded Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. Lê made her first photographs for this series in New Orleans, when Confederate statues started coming down in 2015. Since then, she has gathered different, sometimes conflicting viewpoints on a twenty-first-century cross-country road trip. Lê’s designation of “Fragments” within this series is an homage to the literary structure of Specimen Days and a poetic way of sequencing the pictures.

Each limited-edition print is hand-packed with great care and ships from New York within 3–5 days.