LABORATORY SERIES 23. Artist An-My Lê’s Small Wars: Rescue, 1999-2002. Gelatin Silver Print, Edition of 5, 26.5” x 38.” Small Wars is a meditation on the effects, consequences and imagery of war, from Vietnam to Afghanistan. While the photograph captures Vietnam War re-enactors in Virginia and North Carolina, the protagonist in Rescue is the natural landscape. Her work is as much about the image of combat as it is about the condition and space that it is reproduced within. Photo Courtesy of the Artist and Murray Guy, New York.
Small Wars
A photographs by An-My Lê
LABORATORY SERIES. No.15. Left: Diagram of the Stanley Milgram Experiment. Conducted at Yale University in 1961, the experiment examined the relationship between obedience and authority. The test involved two actors, one test subject and an electroshock generator: the experimenter (the figure of authority), the teacher (the test subject) and the learner (the accomplice). In this scheme, the experimenter (E) would order the teacher (T) to administer fake electric shocks to the learner (L) for every wrong answer in a series of questions, increasing the voltage each time. Two thirds of all participants (i.e. teachers) administered the highest 450 volt shock. All others continued to 300 volts. Photo: Wikipedia
Right: Advertisement recruiting subjects for the Milgram Experiment on memory. “I set up a simple experiment to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.” – Stanley Milgram Photo: Wikipedia.
