In the vast terrain between the imaginary and the real, An-My Le’s photographic series 29 Palms occupies a continually oscillating position. What we see are only games, war games to be specific. Everybody is in uniform, but nobody is using live ammo, and it is highly unlikely that anybody in these photos will be seriously injured doing what they are doing. Because they are military games, however, they are preparing actual soldiers to actually go onto a real-life battlefield and confront the enemy. As it haappens, the division in these photos is preparing to be deployed to Iraq, so our reassurance that they are safe in these photos does not retract from the likelihood that by now, one or more of them has died or been seriously wounded in the war.

The visual and conceptual bridge between these quite different points in Le’s photos is the extraordinary desert terrain in the vicinity of 29 Palms in southern California, where these field exercises take place. Although from a topographic perspective it is an ideal environment to prepare for battle in a country like Iraq, 29 Palms also has the mixed blessing of having provided the backdrop for no small number of Hollywood cowboy films, and as a result our ability to discern what is happening inside the frame is mediated by our subconscious recognition of certain particularly photogenic bluffs and gullies. The whole setup seems staged, beyond what its actual imitative role is intended to be.

Even without the breathtaking landscape feeding us subliminal clues, an aura of cinematic déjà vu hangs over each 29 Palms photographic image like the residue from a bad dream. Another source of that malaise is, of course, the unmitigated disaster which the Iraq war has turned out to be, with the Pentagon leadership ill-prepared for the growing insurgency, and military personnel spread far too thinly. Tthe dreamy cloud of unknowing – the same one that surrounds the fabricated threats of Saddam’s WMDs, or the fictitious link between Iraq and al-Qaeda -- somehow infuses the body language of the soldiers themselves, who appear to possess some foreknowledge of the catastrophe into which they are about to fly.