Ed Drew, Brooklyn-born artist created tintypes of the men and women he worked with when he was 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.

Ed Drew, American soldier, Afghanistan, 2013.

These are the first tintypes made in a combat zone since the American Civil War--not since Matthew Brady’s work documenting the Civil War .Tintype is a slow, laborious wet plate process that is difficult to master and work with in warm temperatures. A collodion mixture is hand-poured onto a metal plate, which is then made light sensitive in a darkroom via a silver nitrate solution. The plate, now encased in a light-tight film holder, is exposed to light in camera and then must be processed within ten minutes of exposure. The plate is developed in the darkroom in iron sulfate and then fixed with a hypo solution or potassium cyanide.