The War in Afghanistan in Tintypes
June 28, 2013
Posted by Elissa Curtis
This past April, Ed Drew, a staff sergeant in the California Air National Guard, was deployed to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, as an 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:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2013/06/the-war-in-afghanistan-in-tintypes.html
Slideshow at link.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Reminds me of my great-great Grandfather's pic from the Civil War:
