“Only the unknown frightens men; once they are in the midst of events, they are no longer afraid”, wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. These words capture the spirit of flying and, in many ways, the essence of this project. I never intended to create a simple photographic record. I sought something different: a collection of real experiences, lived firsthand, capable of conveying emotions through images. Anyone viewing them should feel as if they are there, alongside the crews, sharing even for a brief moment what happens in flight, in that extreme space made of sky and steel.
I have built this project over more than twenty-five years of flying—not on the ground, but in the air. I flew helicopters with the wind in my face and my hands frozen from the cold. I flew military jets at supersonic speed, surrounded by clouds. I had the opportunity to go to Afghanistan, or as a close friend puts it, “to the middle of nowhere.” Over this period, my work has been published in numerous international aviation and defense magazines, including AVIOFLAP, ELIFLAP, JP-4, Rivista Aeronautica, VOLARE, Notiziario della Guardia Costiera, Tecnologia & Difesa, AEREI, RAIDS–Italia, Wings of Gold Magazine, Air International, JWings, Heli World, Air Forces Monthly, Aviation News, Combat Aircraft, Warships, Marines & Forces Navales, Coccarde Tricolori, AIRFAN, LookOut Magazine, and Global Military.
I photographed military aircraft from another aircraft, working in a constantly moving three-dimensional space, where every image existed for only a few seconds and nothing was left to chance. Distance, position, light: every element was created in real time through coordination, communication, and precision. My assignments spanned Italy and Afghanistan, focusing on air-to-air military aviation photography and long-term editorial projects.
When you are in flight or in an operational theater, risk is always present. There is no time to think, no time for fear. But you do it. You are there with your camera, your eye always in the viewfinder, your finger ready to capture a moment, to document a scene, a story, someone’s life. Every mission started with a briefing and continued in flight as a shared process. Over time, I became part of that process, following planning, understanding roles and procedures, to the point of being perceived, in many operational contexts, as a member of the crew. I worked with aeronautical awareness, respecting limits, conditions, and responsibilities, integrating the photographic vision within the mission itself.
I sought the light, built the background, and directed the formation geometry. The sky became my workspace: not a backdrop, but an environment to read and control. I operated from open doors and through canopies, with tethered equipment and limited mobility, turning every constraint into a creative choice. The images were born from shared decisions: position, separation, flight paths. Each request was part of a balance between visual need and operational safety. It is within this balance that trust was built, an essential element of the entire project.
I accumulated over 190 flight hours on air-to-air missions, flying 44 types of military aircraft and working with 44 units from various armed forces: Italy, NATO, United States, Spain, and Canada. I documented both fixed-wing and rotary aircraft in real operational conditions, capturing not just the image but the presence, the context, and the relationship between machine and environment. A summary of this journey was the exhibition “20 Years in Flight”, presented in Palermo.
I selected fifty images and brought them out of the editorial context, creating a direct visual narrative. These photographs, taken in flight during operational missions, became experience, sequence, and memory. This project has been published in numerous international aviation and defense magazines, but it has never been just editorial. It has always been, and continues to be, a work of observation and construction: documenting military flight from the inside, as a shared experience among men, machines, and the sky.
By Francesco Militello Mirto – EmmeReports