The still, haunting photos taken on glass plates look like a page right out of the history books, but if you look closer, the military men, and women, aren't wearing the wool blue and grey uniforms of the Civil War.  Instead, they are wearing the camouflage that's being issued now, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Photographer Staff Sgt. Ed Drew has documented the current action in the Middle East during his tour not with a digital camera or an iPhone, but with an old-fashioned camera; a camera that goes further back than film, actually etching the image of his brothers and sisters in war on a small, hand-sized piece of tin.

Drew said he created his art to put a face to the generic "Bring the Troops Home" mantra that has been heard.  He wanted to document and name his friends who, in some cases, were the first to know who died, actually carried the body of the fallen soldier home to base, or who didn't come home themselves.

Keep Reading

Lead Nurse Practitioner Lori Reed examines a Covid patient at Piedmont Pulmonary Covid Recovery Clinic in Atlanta in 2022. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mostly attributed the nationwide rise in life expectancy to fewer deaths caused by the infectious disease. (Steve Schaefer/AJC file)

Credit: Steve Schaefer

Featured

Atlanta firefighters, crash on Piedmont Avenue at Monroe Drive

Credit: Ben Hendren