14,000 Photos of Army Uniforms and Rations from the 70s and 80s

This story has been updated.

The US armed forces is made up of 1.3 million people — soldiers, pilots, plumbers, lawyers, logistics specialists, doctors and even dog handlers. And those active duty forces need uniforms, cold weather gear, backpacks, shelf-stable rations and all kinds of other essential supplies. 

In a group of unassuming office buildings nestled in the suburbs 20 miles west of Boston, the US Army Natick Soldier Systems Center helps develop and test a wide variety of this kind of gear that keeps soldiers safe, well-fed and dressed for any conditions. 

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On the Boston Public Library’s Digital Commonwealth archive, you can find a treasure trove of 14,000 photographs documenting decades of the work done at the US Army Natick Soldier Systems Center.

In the archive you will find photos from official ceremonies, dozens of different types of tents and temporary shelters developed at the center, and various parachute designs. But the majority of this fascinating archive is filled with photos of military food, uniforms and protective gear. 

There’s almost 500 photos of helmets, more than 500 photos of different boots, and nearly 400 photos of balaclavas, parkas, thermal underwear and other cold weather gear.  

There’s over 2,000 photos of military uniforms — battle fatigues, officer dress uniforms, flight suits, bomb disposal outfits, and hospital uniforms for both men and women. 

The vast majority of the photos were taken in the 1970s and 80s, and they definitely reflect the era they were taken in.

Many of the studio shots were photographed on medium format film in a studio, with professional gear like colored backdrops and multiple flashes.

In the photos that feature prototype meals, large sans-serif capital letters spell out such delicious dishes as AIR FORCE BEEF BITES (SHELF STABLE) or FREEZE DRIED RAW PORKCHOPS and even some of the meals prepared for NASA’s Apollo program: BITE SIZE SPACE FOODS. Some of these images could be stills from a Wes Anderson film. 

Flipping through this collection randomly can be jarring. One minute you see a pretty, smiling woman donning a Kevlar vest, then a tray of dehydrated processed beef, followed by a paratrooper with an anti-tank missile and then a metal casket in a grassy field. 

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I wish I could take credit for discovering this incredible collection, but I must give credit to Paris-based visual researcher Matthieu Nicol who discovered these photos while researching vintage food packaging a few years ago. 

“While working on these food images, I started bumping into one, and two and three and 100 and 1,000 and 2,000 and, and many thousands...I was like, this is amazing. And each time I would find an image, I couldn't believe my eyes. I say, is that real?,” said Nicol who spoke to me via Zoom. 

Nicol first published a small pocket-sized book of the food photos from the Natick collection titled “BETTER FOOD FOR OUR FIGHTING MEN.” Then he curated a selection of the uniform photos in a major photography festival, which attracted a lot of attention which led to his next book of the uniform photos, “Fashion Army.”

Nicol said, “I'm not at all a fashion specialist. I don't know anything about textile, and my interest is not at all about looks, and textile, and the history of fashion. This is not my specialty. I'm a picture editor, but I saw immediately that these images had so much to say to us today.”

For “Fashion Army,” Nicol stuck to some self-imposed rules while choosing which of the 14,000 images to include: only actual people wearing uniforms (no mannequins), and only poses and glances that were slightly awkward to make it “a bit uncanny”. 

While some of the photos (and models) look odd or hilarious today, he wasn’t looking to make fun any of the subjects in the photos, and chose not to include some of the most bizarre photos. Nicol said, “So we decided with my publisher...we said, OK, these images, they're crazy images, but these ones, we take them off because we don't want to get into this mockery thing.”

Nicol made many attempts to find out more about the collection, but getting information from a bureaucracy like the US Army turned out to be daunting. After a lot of back and forth, the Army confirmed that the photos were indeed in the public domain, and free to be used in any way. 

Nicol said, “So my approach to this corpus is purely, artistic or visual, because I don't have all the answers. And my aim with this work is to circulate images that were once produced for a certain reason that now have no value, no use.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Matthieu Nicol's last name.

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