Little Rock photographer Ed Drew, whose series “Images of Afghanistan,” featured tintype photographs of his fellow airmen in a U.S. Air Force Combat Rescue Unit. Drew is working on an exhibit later this year of tintype and cyanotype photos of black Arkansas veterans for Mosaic Templars Cultural Center. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette John Sykes, Jr.)

In 2013, Ed Drew was serving with the California Air National Guard in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He was a staff sergeant and a helicopter aerial gunner with a U.S. Air Force Combat Rescue Unit.

On downtime between search and rescue missions, he was taking pictures of his fellow airmen. But they weren't just any photos; they were tintypes, a form of photography popular more than 150 years ago. In fact, Drew was the first person since the Civil War to make tintype photographs of Americans in a combat zone.

The results were collected in his series "Images of Afghanistan" and show Drew's friends and fellow airmen, often equipped with their combat gear, in hazy, imperfect tintypes. The ghostly juxtaposition of 21st-century military personnel captured using such an old method was poetic. A story in The Guardian compared his work to that of Matthew Brady, whose photography documented the Civil War.

Several of Drew's Afghanistan images are now in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History's permanent collection. The series is also part of the Progressive Art Collection, owned by Cleveland-based Progressive Insurance.

Drew, 38, moved to Little Rock last year with his wife, an attending physician at Baptist Medical Center, and their five children. He's at work on a new series of tintype and cyanotype photographs of 30 black Arkansas veterans from Arkansas for an exhibit scheduled for September at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center.

"I love this state," he says. "I wanted to honor the state and talk about the state's history, and I wanted to focus on black veterans ... the black narrative has always been kind of pushed to the background in America, but it's been prominent in the fabric of America."

Rose C. is featured in Ed Drew’s photo series of Arkansas military veterans that will be on exhibit later this year. (Courtesy of Ed Drew)

Drew is tall and muscular. Lines of tattoo ink peak from beneath the sleeves of his black T-shirt and his short hair is flecked with gray at his temples. He is a native New Yorker and grew up in Brooklyn. His father, Edward, was a policeman. His mother, Carmen, was a New York City Transit train operator. They divorced about the time he was born (Edward died when Drew was 16).

The oldest of three brothers, Drew was an arty, creative kid.

"I always marched to the beat of my own drum," he says at his kitchen table one afternoon last month as his oldest son, 18-year-old Ethan, entertains siblings Sam, James, Seth and Amelia, whose ages range from 1-7, in another room. "That's kind of why I joined the military because it helped me to focus, though I wasn't always the best military person. I just liked being creative."

He was in high school when his mom bought him his first camera, a 35-millimeter Minolta Maxxum.

"It was like magic," he says. "I took that camera with me everywhere, even to prom. I was more concerned with taking photos than dancing."

Drew responded best to visual language, especially if it could transport him, in his mind at least, from the crowded city.

"I never really liked New York. I like the country and being in the woods and nature. I would read about faraway lands, and National Geographic was huge to me. National Geographic photos helped me to escape New York and all the pavement."

He joined the Air Force a month after high school and served for six years. In 2009, he joined the California Air National Guard and also attended the San Francisco Art Institute. He received a degree in sculpture with a minor in photography and studied under photographers Linda Connor, Lonnie Graham and Henry Wessel, Jr.

He became comfortable traversing between the "super liberal, San Francisco arts scene and the super conservative, military, combat rescue environment," he says.

A tintype photograph from a series made in 2013 by Ed Drew in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. (Courtesy Ed Drew)

Drew was deployed to Afghanistan in spring 2013.

"We worked as kind of a [medical evacuation] capacity," he says. "It was crazy. I enjoyed it. It was what we were trained to do."

He started making portraits of his buddies between missions.

"When I look at those photos, I'm looking at my friends," he says. "That's who I went to war with. We'd take off, and who knew if we'd come back?"

The anachronistic wet plate, tintype process isn't exactly efficient. The method Drew uses involves a "... metal plate coated in collodion and photosensitized in an aqueous silver nitrate solution," he writes in an email. "It is then developed with a ferrous sulfate solution and fixed with rapid fixer [ammonium thiosulfate]."

In Afghanistan, he had to deal with the arid conditions and a lack of supplies to make his pictures.

"It was so dry out there, my plates were drying up quite quickly," Drew says. "And sometimes, you would want to add some ether or grain alcohol that sort of assist with the whole process, but I didn't have those."

In their Civil War heyday, tintypes were inexpensive and relatively easy to make.

"They were available to the masses, and I like that whole idea," says Drew, a devout Buddhist. "Egalitarianism in my art is something that is huge for me."

Of course, it's still a hassle, especially considering he could just take a photo with his phone or a regular camera. But the process and the mistakes are part of the appeal.

"Tintypes are really hard," he says. "If you make a mistake in a tintype, you either scrap that photo or accept it. You have to be OK with accepting nuances and little issues within the photo itself."

Little Rock photographer Ed Drew wears his airman uniform in a self-portrait atop Pinnacle Mountain. (Courtesy Ed Drew)

Being made on "japanned metal," not tin, he says, also makes them quite durable.

One of his biggest influences is German artist Joseph Beuys who served in the German Air Force in WWII.

"He was a former Nazi pilot, but he pushed that away. And as an artist, his focus was on democracy," says Drew, who has also photographed an urban gardening project for "at-risk" youth in San Francisco and tintypes of roadside pineapple vendors in Hawaii. "That's a pillar for me -- democracy, things that are of the people."

Drew, an Air Force Reserve staff sergeant at Little Rock Air Force Base, carries copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in the pocket of his flight suit.

His patriotism, Buddhism and the long and sometimes unpleasant shadow of American history are equal influences on his photography.

And photography -- through tintype, cyanotypes or more typical methods -- is how he tells the stories of his subjects.

"When I take photos, I want people's eyes to be opened to more than themselves," he says. "I do portraits specifically because I want them to see humans. I don't want them to see a black person, I want them to see a human."

Ed Drew uses this camera to take tintype photos of black Arkansas veterans. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Sean Clancy)

Retired National Guard Col. Anita Deason met Drew in 2018 at a meeting of Arkansas veterans groups and artists at the Department of Arkansas Heritage.

"We were talking about how to provide veterans better access to art and art therapy," says Deason, the military and veterans affairs liaison for U.S. Sen. John Boozman.

Deason looked up Drew's work after meeting him and liked what she saw.

"For this young veteran to have this vision, I was very impressed by his unique work," says Deason, who has also worked with the Library of Congress' Veterans Experience Project.

When he was commissioned by the Mosaic Templars to create an exhibit of black veterans, he reached out to her for help in connecting with some of them.

"Everybody should have a voice, especially our veterans, those who have served our country," Deason says. "They should be remembered and honored. And we need to be cognizant of the question: are we reaching all groups?"

Christina Shutt, director of the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, also met Drew at that gathering of veterans groups and artists.

Ed Drew used tintype photography, a method not used in combat since the Civil War, to photograph his fellow airmen in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. (Courtesy Ed Drew)

"The more I talked to him, the more I knew that doing an exhibit with Ed would be the perfect way for the museum to talk about not only veteran artists but also veterans who use art as an emotional growth and healing process," she says.

Shutt says she was "blown away" by Drew's work. "The way he is able to communicate emotion, story and narrative through a single photograph is astounding. I want the whole world to see it ... telling these stories is about our core belief in wanting to tell a more complete story of America. You can't understand the American story without knowing the African-American story. Those stories are woven together, and Ed's exhibit is one piece of how we are trying to do that."

Estella Morris, program manager of the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System Homeless Program, met Drew through Deason.

"From a historical perspective, taking a look at African-American veterans in Arkansas is something that has not been done," she says. "Everybody had just opened their arms and welcomed him. And it's because of his craft and him as a person. I think because of that, he has developed a deep appreciation for the state and for its people."

Sam H., is one of the Arkansas veterans photographed by Ed Drew that will be featured in an exhibit at Mosaic Templars Cultural Center later this year. (Courtesy of Ed Drew)

Veterans in the exhibit have served from WWII through more recent wars.

Among the men and women Drew has photographed for the series are a general, a Silver Star winner and several colonels. But there are also those who served briefly and were honorably discharged.

"If you served, you served," Drew says. "Thank you for your service. You're here, and I'm going to take your photo."

Some of the veterans' stories, even those of high-ranking officers, include racism and oppression, he says.

"I don't necessarily want to focus on that. It's part of the story, but that's not the whole story. The beauty of hearing their stories was that they didn't forget what happened, but they didn't let it define them. Their love for Arkansas and for this country is always first and foremost."

Along with the photographs, Drew plans to include text from letters written by Confederate soldiers.

"It references the present with the past," he says. Drew hopes to continue his Arkansas veterans series to include all other races.

"I certainly want to focus on Arkansas," he says. "Any work I do now is Arkansas-related. I've been all over, and I've found that people have these preconceived notions of Arkansas that are not true. I want to do work that highlights Arkansas and show the rest of the world.

"Like with all my work, I take away preconceived notions and I show the humanity of the person or the group of people. I want to do that for Arkansas."

Style on 01/05/2020