War photography has come a long way since the shadowy tintypes of the American Civil War. With modern equipment, photographers can capture details of combat like never before. But for some the painstaking process of working with old mediums has a special significance that current technology just can’t convey.
Ed Drew, a California Air National Guard staff sergeant, has revisited the tintype technique to create a series of fascinating — and often haunting — portraits of modern soldiers in Afghanistan.
Drew was deployed this April to the Helmand Province in Afghanistan as a helicopter gunner. His job: man a 50-caliber machine gun aboard a HH60-Pave Hawk search and rescue chopper.
Then, during his off-duty time, Drew would take portrait photographs of his fellow soldiers on tintypes — thin sheets of iron metal in which an underexposed negative is placed and coated with chemicals. This produces dark, ghostly images that manage to capture a side of warfare not seen in a very long time.
They are believed to be the first tintype images produced in a combat zone since the Civil War.
“To do this process in a war, let alone a foreign war, is historically significant,” Drew told the New Yorker. “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 says he started out by wanting to document his life for his new son, who was born in January.
“I wanted him to know his father in the event that I was killed in action,” said Drew, “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.”
To see more of Drew’s amazing work head to his website, eddrew.com.
