Virtual Exhibition
SNAPSHOTS from WORLD WAR II 1943-1945

In 2006 a significant group of black and white war related negatives taken in 1943-1945 were discovered. They portray and/or were taken by a number of Finnish Americans from Fairport Harbor, Ohio USA who, like many others, were impacted each in their own way by World War II.

Snapshots are universally found in almost every home photo album and many tend to be somewhat stiff formal documents of people captured on film. When those are compared with photographs created by trained professionals, they often pale in aesthetic quality, content and imagination.

This small group, however, might be considered the folk art parallel to art photographs partly because of their interesting compositions and variety of subjects. These photo snapshots reveal a special sense of time and place. They also visually describe situations and circumstances that were part of WWII, which dramatically influenced the human psyche. Humor is a known emotional defense. Love, isolation, and human bonding are also present in these candid pictures. The initial three diverse samples are quite powerful. The first is a framed portrait of a woman, which sits on top of a bed. Outside a male soldier walks by and looks into his empty tent. The second military photograph features cattle and soldiers riding together in a truck. And, the third is a portrait of a smiling soldier busy counting his money as a car goes whizzing by in a blur. If "a picture is worth a thousand words," then these war related snapshots begin to tell part of an amazing story.