Photographer: Larry Towell
Larry Towell's business card reads "Human Being". Like Robert Doisneau, he is one those rare photojournalists who travels reluctantly and only when the subject really matters. Experience as a poet and a folk musician did much to shape his personal style, and wherever he travels, Towell concentrates on finding and photographing intimacy.
The son of a car repairman, Towell grew up in a large family in rural Ontario. During studies in visual arts at Toronto's York University, he was given a camera and taught how to process black and white film. He brought the camera home to Ontario because there was no place he wanted to photograph more.
Photographer, Larry Towell
A stint of volunteer work in Calcutta, in 1976, provoked Towell to photograph and write, questioning the distribution of wealth and exploring issues of land and landlessness. Back in Canada, he taught folk music to support himself and his family. In 1984, he became a freelance photographer and writer focusing on the dispossessed, exile, and peasant rebellion. He completed projects on the Nicaraguan Contra war, on the relatives of the disappeared in Guatemala, and on American Vietnam War veterans who had returned to Vietnam to rebuild the country. His first published magazine essay, Paradise Lost, exposed the ecological consequences of the catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
In 1996, he completed a project based on ten years of reportage in El Salvador, followed the next year by a major book on the Palestinians. His fascination with landlessness also led him to the Mennonite migrant workers of Mexico, an eleven-year project completed in 2000. With the help of the inaugural Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, he finished a second highly acclaimed book on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in 2005. He is currently finishing a project on his own family in rural Ontario, where he sharecrops a 75 acre farm.
Towell, whose awards are numerous, has completed assignments and published picture essays in most major international magazines including "The New York Times", "Life", "Stern", "Geo", "Elle", "Esquire", "Rolling Stone", "Libération", "The Sunday Times" and others. He has recorded several audio CDs of original poetry and songs. He became a Magnum nominee in 1988, and a full member in 1993.
