Towell began photographing and writing during a stint of volunteer work in Calcutta. He's perhaps best known for his works on Palestine and Central America. His photo essays have featured the war in Nicaragua, relatives of the "disappeared" in Guatemala, and U.S. Vietnam veterans who returned to Asia to help rebuild war-ravaged country.

Towell's work has exhibited throughout Europe and North America. His images have appeared in The New York Times, Life magazine, GEO and Stern. He also published several books including his most recent, The World From My Front Porch, featuring family photographs and text, and accompanied by a CD of his original songs.

Towell has been the recipient of numerous photography awards such as the World Press and Picture of the Year awards, and the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award.

Towell lives in rural Ontario and sharecrops a small farm with his wife and children.

Being a photographer allows you to enter a place that you're curious about or that you care about -- something that you want to see for yourself, something you want to witness for yourself, or something you want to say. It gives you the excuse to be there. So having a camera around your neck is really very liberating in a lot of ways.

I did some volunteer work in India and the chronic famine of Calcutta struck me. I had never seen anything like that before. I'd only read about it. I'd never seen anybody die of hunger. So I started to ask basic questions about what's going on in the world, what's wrong with the world, issues and questions of world distribution, distribution of wealth – power. Where is the power and who has the power? And I found with a camera I could explore some of those things.

I guess what I'm trying to do is explore power. Look at power what it has done to the world and particularly its victims.

I don't think we should be photographing the politicians. I don't think we should be listening to them. I think we should be looking at the victims of those policies, and having a camera around your neck gives you that freedom. That excuse. The only thing really worth documenting is the civilian victims.

People change you. It's not the process of photographing. It's a process of engagement and we're all changed by our environments. And we're all changed by the pursuit of our ideals or the pursuit of our curiosities, the fulfillment of our curiosities, and finding a place in this world.

I think as a photographer you encounter people in many contexts, and sometimes it's too much. As photographers we can easily lose our bearing in the world. It's easy to photograph a famine and not care. It's easy to photograph a war and not care if you see it too much. I think we have to reflect upon what we're doing and engage with the subject that we're photographing and forget about the news, forget whether or not it's going to sell in a news magazine. Do it for history.

I just don't shoot digital. I won't. I like film. Photographers today have to compete. If a picture is six hours old, it's too old to use. If you look at the coverage of the tsunami you can go on to any of the websites and there's a catalogue there of 400 photographs all taken in the past 30 minutes for you to look through. And none of them will stay with you. They're just news pictures. They're not even good news pictures.

They're nothing -- they don't have any meaning. There's no time put in them, no thinking that's put into them and when there's no time and no thinking put into still photography or into photojournalism what does that say?

I think that's damaging, and I think it also it destroys the notion that photography is reflective, that it's about history, that it's about self-contemplation. And it's all being replaced by a sort of philosophy of speed which is only of fleeting significance. I think the news is killing journalism.

When I photograph, I tend to photograph the things that I believe in. Every photographer has a story of some sort that they present. I've been working on a series of projects on landlessness. I'm interested in what makes people into who they are, how land makes people into who they are, how they gain their identities from the land they live on, from the place they call home, and what happens to people when they lose their land.

Have I ever been in a situation where I've told myself 'I'm not going to photograph that' because it crosses a line? Many times. For example, Hurricane Mitch. When the American Marines found out that there was a journalist in the hotel working for the New York Times Magazine, they come banging on my door to invite me to go along with them to photograph their aid effort. The American military had just about destroyed Honduras during the Contra War. They used it as a launching pad against the civilian population in Nicaragua to overthrow the Sandinistas, to overthrow the government. I'll be damned if I'm going to make them look good.

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