Q: What inspired you to make the Noble Eagle photo project?Īfter I retired, I became a 48-year-old, full-time undergraduate student surrounded by teens and twenty-somethings, with whom I felt I had almost nothing in common, except for photography. I don't get hungry or thirsty, the cold is less cold, the heat is more bearable. But even today, without weapons and ammo, everything else takes a back seat when I'm making photos. It probably helped a bit knowing I was carrying a rifle and pistol and a bunch of ammo, as were the 10-20 soldiers and sailors around me. But looking through the lens was oddly relaxing, like being in another world. I was acutely aware of where we were, what we were doing and that maybe someone wanted to kill us. It was also an incredible opportunity to meet and talk with locals and get a glimpse of their daily lives.Īnd, everything melted away when I had the camera up to my face. It was great to break up that monotony by getting off base and documenting the work with Farah's leadership and the Afghan people. FOB life can get pretty dull because you're confined within the thick, dirt-filled, Hesco barrier walls day after day after day for months on end. It was the best of both worlds, as far as I was concerned. I was assigned to do photography because the combat camera airman assigned to Provincial Reconstruction Team Farah was pulled away from the deployment at the last minute. There was a steady flow of casualties the entire time I was there–a mass casualty event at least weekly. Our primary medical mission was to maintain a base aid station and provide essential medical support and services to the 1,100 coalition and Afghan personnel living on the FOB. What was it like to photograph in this setting? Q: You were both a medic and a photographer while deployed in Afghanistan. As corny as it sounds, having my snowboard stolen was a life-changing event. Within a few weeks, I enlisted in the Navy and awaited orders to report to boot camp. I was inspired and motivated to do better.
We hadn't always made the best decisions together, but after 12 weeks of boot camp, he was this squared-away guy, standing tall, with a sense of pride and purpose and direction. Around the same time, a high-school buddy returned from Navy boot camp. Without it, I needed to figure out another way to make a living. I'd never seriously considered enlisting in the military, but one night, mid-season, someone stole my snowboard. I wasn't making much money, but it paid just enough to cover gas for my little Ford Escort to and from work. I had a job as a snowboard instructor at a small ski resort. I'd been a mediocre high-school student at best, with no aspirations of going to college and no real sustainable or marketable skills. When I was 20, I was living at my mom's place in the small, one-stoplight town of Cooperstown, N.Y.
Q: What originally motivated you to join the military? Joshua Ives Ives included pictures from home in his Noble Eagle project, because memories of home were an important part of life on the base. Each military member who deployed to Afghanistan was assigned a Noble Eagle number, a unique identifier used for tracking that indicated the duties, roles and functions assigned to them.įor Veteran's Day, NPR talked to Ives about his military service, the Noble Eagle project and his reflections on Afghanistan, then and now. and Canadian governments in response to 9/11. The title of Ives' photography project references Operation Noble Eagle, the name given to the military operation launched by the U.S. He also served as the team photographer during his deployment, documenting life on the base and in the local community. As the senior medic on the team, Ives managed the base aid station and a team of three Navy corpsmen and two Army medics.
Ives deployed to Afghanistan in October 2012 and served at a Forward Operating Base (FOB) on the outskirts of Farah with 1,100 personnel from the U.S., Italy, Slovenia and Afghanistan. He sifted through more than 15,000 photographs taken during his time in Afghanistan to make Noble Eagle, a mixed-media project that is part documentary, part personal reflection. After 24 years of service in the Navy, Chief Petty Officer Joshua Ives retired in 2015.