Lê, who fled South Vietnam as a teen with her family in 1975, began using photography to reconcile her memories with the realities of the Vietnam War. Based on that work, she was invited to photograph U.S. naval ships preparing for deployment to Iraq. Lê spent nine years reflecting on the U.S. Navy’s global presence, taking photographs aboard battleships as well as vessels engaged in training exercises, humanitarian operations, and scientific missions. Here, the sailors spend time firing at life-sized outlines of figures on targets. Using a Deardorff large-format camera, the artist reduces the world’s greatest sea power to a simple vision of human activity within a setting of sky and water.