But what struck me about these images was not their technical success. Underlying all the clean lines and sharp contrasts was a certain weirdness. The soldiers in "Small Wars" look as if they could have stepped out of 1974 Vietnam, yet instead of rice paddies, they're surrounded by American pine forests. Lê came to the United States from Vietnam in 1975 as a political refugee, and she's spent the better part of her career in this country thinking about landscape. In 2005, she told the L.A. Times:

"Landscape has its specificity in a geological way, but it also holds so much about the history and the culture of a country. I think for anybody in exile it's connected to the idea of home. You think of the landscape and you think of the food, the air, the smells. It's all connected to the land."

The fact that battle isn't a typical part of the American landscape (or hasn't been for a long time) is part of what makes these images so arresting. We don't actually fight here, and yet we still feel the need to experience war—by rehearsing for it and rehashing it—on our own turf.

"Small Wars" and "29 Palms" have appeared in galleries and museums across the country. You can see some of the images here. Check out the Small Wars book here.