An-my Lê moved with her family from Vietnam to the United States in 1975 and did not return until 1994, when she began to photograph Vietnamese villages and countryside in a series informed by her childhood memories.

This photograph, Small Wars (Ambush I), is part of a series begun in 1999 when she gained permission to join a group of Vietnam War re-enactors in Virginia, provided that she use a camera dating from the period. Conjuring iconic war photography, Lê’s photograph blurs history and fantasy through the documentation of real-life practices in which war is re-created or re-imagined.