The photographer An-My Lê’s first American museum survey, “On Contested Terrain,” followed her most consistent subject: the United States military and its impact through both time and space. The precisely installed exhibition offered the opportunity to view each of her photographic series, arranged from newest to oldest, revealing how her works collapse the distinctions between what’s fiction and what isn’t.

Lê uses antique, large-format wooden cameras, which give her grandly scaled pictures a sense of richness, clarity, and depth that’s worlds away from digital photography. In interviews, the