In Remembrance: Dinh Q. Lê

What stills the viewer before Untitled, from the 1998 photoweaving series Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness by the late artist Dinh Q. Lê (born Lê Quang Đỉnh, 1968–2024), is not merely the tragic history embodied by the two individuals whose eyes and frontal stance meet your own (see Figure 1).¹ The historical context of these photographed figures is now widely recognized by most visitors to the museums or galleries where their images live on through the medium of contemporary art. We know that they are no longer among the living and that their deaths took place in Cambodia in the late 1970s in one of the world’s most horrific episodes of history. Knowledge—even if incomplete—of their story brings a sense of unease to the act of viewing. As many have argued, one should question the very ethics of looking at these figures, as they have been frozen in...