NEWS ANNOUNCER: "This is Pleiku,
250 miles north of Saigon
200 homes in the village nearby
were leveled as the VC used the heaviest--"
Growing up in Vietnam during the war
was actually not that dramatic for me
War was part of our life
and we'd wake up and go to school,
and at night they would be mortars falling
[MORTARS FALLING]
I don't think I ever realized
how frightening the world was
until I was actually in the United States
looking at the news and looking back at footages
I think that's when I realized how scary it all was
So I heard about these men who reenact the Vietnam War
It was a very exclusive group,
it was all done by invitation,
and they asked me to come to one of the events,
during the summer of 1999
The very odd amalgamation of people who
come to this group,
it's obvious that anyone who's been in combat
would never participate because it's not quite a farce,
but it's so far from reality
that anyone who's lived through the real thing
would not want to relive it again
There are veterans,
perhaps people who'd been in desk jobs
or driving trucks,
and for them it was a way to experience
something that was a little closer to combat
To be able to come to the event,
you have to participate
and I was given different choices
of what characters I could inhabit
And I could be the Viet Cong Guerrilla
I could be the combat photographer
I wanted to pick a character
that would allow me to move back and forth
between the GIs, and the Viet Congs,
and the North Vietnamese army
And it seems that the Viet Cong Guerrilla
would be a good character,
because I could be with the North Vietnamese
and turncoat and go to the GIs
So I had to actually order
Vietnamese-made black pajamas,
the Ho Chi Minh sandals,
the booney hats
Then I quickly realized
that I was a keystone to the reenactment
because suddenly they had a real Vietnamese woman
who was a Viet Cong
and it just really boosted the authenticity of the event
Wearing the black pajamas was very difficult
because it represents something so frightening
Growing up as a child,
I think I had never really seen a live Viet Cong
I had seen bodies in the streets
during the Tet Offensive
I had demons to try to overcome
And I quickly realized that they were working out
their issues,
and so I thought it was an interesting moment
that we all came together to make these pictures
The day the war started in Iraq in 2003,
I became extremely distraught
Being an artist, I thought of ways to deal with that
I came across pictures of the Marines training
in a Marine base called 29 Palms,
outside of Los Angeles,
near Joshua Tree
And the landscape looked like parts of Afghanistan
And after working with the reenactors,
I thought, well, a stand in for Afghanistan could just
be great
So I called up the public relations department
at 29 Palms,
and asked for permission to come and photograph there
Even though it was training, it was for real
The scale is enormous
You're dealing with fighter jet planes
You're dealing with tanks moving across the land
And so the level of intensity
was multiplied a hundredfold
You could really see that it was training for war,
that it was a set, that it was a theater
So I became interested in looking at the landscape,
in terms of strategy
You're looking at a field
And it's a field,
but if you look at it in military terms,
there's an exit and entry point
It's really more using the landscape
as a place to contemplate war
And I love 19th century photography
That's what inspires me,
and it's part of that tradition
So it comes down to,
"How do you incorporate that in the landscape?"
And it's about trying to find ways
to layer the description of the land
with my interest in culture,
my interest in architecture,
and then also my interest
in all of the current issues
that people are concerned with
But I think in the end,
I'm really trying to understand the effect
of war on my life
And I'm just using landscape photography
to try to answer those questions