Summary: | The essay, ”Traveling with a Sack of Food and a Camera: Eliot Elisofon in Wartime Finland 1944,” is based on a war-correspondent's diary for LIFE magazine of a two-week field-trip to northern Finland at the end of September 1944. Elisofon's purpose was to document the expulsion by the Finns of the Nazi army in Lapland. I analyze his text and its conjunction with the photos, with a focus on a) Elisofon's critical views of Finnish military strategy as it developed at the skirmishes at Torneå on 3-5 October (when he was injured by German Stukas); b) on the social effects of the war on Finnish life; c) on the consolatory and compensatory impact of food (one of Elisofon's major pastimes); d) on the ethics and the technique of his photography. This is the second article in a series of three about Elisofon in Finland and Sweden (September 1939, February-November 1944). The essay contains five photos by Elisofon, in addition to that on the cover.
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