While scouring the internet some years back for obscure images of foods from the 1970s, Matthieu Nicol, a photo researcher in Paris, happened upon a trove of freely available pictures recently declassified by the U.S. Army.

Professionally photographed over a decades-long span ending in the 1990s, the images depicted people in uniforms for diverse military use.

Yet the original purpose of the photos can only be conjectured, as Nicol explained; despite his efforts, the Army would disclose next to nothing about the collection of some 14,100 images.

That did not deter Nicol, 46, a former editor at Le Monde, from undertaking a project aimed not only at vaulting the pictures out of archival obscurity but also making them a part of a broader discourse.

Noting how the clinical coolness of the photos, with their pale pastel backgrounds and affectless young subjects, resembled so much contemporary fashion photography, he assembled 350 of them in a new book, “Fashion Army.” It is at once a handsomely produced photo album and a metacommentary on what Bruno Ceschel, whose SPHB Editions imprint published the book, called “the interplay between military functionality and the fashion industry.”

Although the images chosen are presented through a fashion lens, the intended purpose of certain garments depicted in them was not lost on Nichol. “They were produced for the use of a killing machine,” he said.

In a recent interview, which has been edited and condensed, Nicol described his adventure into the infinite slipstream of internet imagery and the types of conversations he hopes his book will inspire.

Q: Talk about the evolution of this project.

A: I was digging through the internet for period images of food from the ‘70s — with a particular interest in food from the survivalist movement, when suddenly I came across one, two, 10, 100 and then thousands of images of people taken at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research and Development and Engineering Center near Boston.

The images were of all kinds of people wearing prototypes of military clothing for every use, from secretary to soldier, paratrooper to bomb-disposal specialist.

Q: What about that intrigued you?

A: Though these were period images, they were not that old — ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. The subjects are young, in their 20s or 30s, and the images and outfits looked very contemporary. They could have been shot for an Acne Studios campaign or, say, Martin Margiela or Balenciaga.

Q: This raises the question of how official Army documents come to be in the public domain.

A: That is a big part of the story. After I discovered them, I tried for months to find out more. There is very little metadata. I contacted the U.S. Army, the Natick Center, and they gave me no answer at all for six months. Finally, after about a year, the media director replied and said you can file a memorandum with the Army allowing you to ask questions. I filed the memorandum, with 25 key questions and, at last, the media director replied.

Q: Saying what?

A: The response was, “You can ask the questions, but we will not answer you.”

Q: That’s it?

A: He did confirm that the images are declassified and that they are in the public domain. They exist as part of the Digital Commonwealth in Massachusetts, copyright-free. Anyone can do whatever they want with them.

Q: In the case of combat gear, one is particularly struck by the fact that designers have stolen from military uniforms so often that camo, say, is just another element in the toolbox.

A: Yet you do have to keep in mind that these are garments whose intention is improving the daily working lives of people who may be waging war.

My selects for the book were ostensibly about fashion. The camera operators were obviously professionals, so the pictures are fashionable and attractive. Although they were taken 40 years ago, the subjects pose like they might today — though I’m sure the people they shot are not models.

Still, we need to avoid feeling that these are glamorous images. To view them that way is to avoid the issue of the garments’ final utility. I look at it as an opportunity to reflect, discuss and educate.

Q: The archive is, it has to be said, a real discovery.

A: When Clément Chéroux, director of the Cartier-Bresson Foundation and an expert in vernacular photography, saw the collection, he said, “What you have is incredible.” But, you know, although I am a picture editor by profession and a collector, I don’t have the money to buy things. So I am happiest when I can find lost images and recirculate them.

While I’ve done a major show of the pictures at the big photography festival at Arles — with 150 images printed human scale — and now the book, what I would love is for people in other fields to do what I was not able to do.

Q: What is that?

A: I’d love it if fashion specialists, textile experts, historians could take this archive and begin to explore all its meanings.