This past April, Ed Drew, a staff sergeant in the California Air National Guard, was deployed to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, as a helicopter aerial gunner with a United States Air Force Combat Rescue Unit. During his deployment, which lasted through June, the Brooklyn-born artist created tintypes of the men and women he worked with—the first tintypes made in a combat zone since the Civil War.

“To do this process in a war, let alone a foreign war, is historically significant,” said Drew. “The process of wet-plate tintypes is challenging enough with perfect conditions and the availability of chemicals. In a foreign war, with the stresses of combat, lack of basic materials, drying desert air, and the wind and dust of Afghanistan, it was quite a challenge.”

Drew’s second son was born in January. “I wanted him to know his father in the event that I was killed in action,” Drew told me, “and it became less important that my work was done in tintype than that I could show the humanity of war in the eyes of airmen I fly combat missions with.”

Here’s a look: Click on the red arrows [#image: /photos/59096bf8019dfc3494ea17c9]for a full-screen view.





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Photographs by Ed Drew.