Larry Towell (b.1953, Chatham-Kent, Ontario)

Since beginning his career as a freelance photojournalist in 1984, Larry Towell (b.1953) has photographed conflict and resistance movements, including in Afghanistan, Palestine, Ukraine, and Guatemala. In a 1988 photograph, a Catholic nun strides past a soldier who sits smoking, a weapon resting on his lap. The wooden frame of the army post divides the composition, visualizing the tension between the military and the Catholic church in Guatemala in the 1980s. Towell’s work has received international recognition, and in 1988 he became the first Canadian member of the famed Magnum Photo agency.

Larry Towell, *My oldest son Moses Towell eats a wild pear while Ann sits behind the wheel of a 1951 pickup truck. It’s the family’s only vehicle. I bought it as junk for $200 and fixed it up on my own*, 1983, silver gelatin print. © Larry Towell / Magnum Photos.

Towell favours long-form investigative projects that allow him to connect with the people he photographs, and during the mid to late 1980s, he made numerous trips to Central America. In Nicaragua, he met civilians who had been persecuted by the United States-backed Contras and photographed victims of landmines. In El Salvador, he witnessed the interaction between civilians and FMLN (Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) fighters. The Salvadoran army would bomb mountain villages to drive away the primarily Indigenous inhabitants who might aid the resistance. Thousands were killed, some were imprisoned, and others were relocated to refugee camps. Towell’s work from this period considers the impact of landlessness and the struggle for survival in a conflict zone. In Guatemala, he documented human rights abuses and the protest movement GAM (Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo or Mutual Support Group). His book House on Ninth Street is a collection of photographs and interviews with relatives of the “disappeared,” people presumed murdered by Guatemalan security forces.

Towell considers photography to be an integral part of his daily life, and in that spirit he has also photographed his family, who live on a farm in southwestern Ontario. Over the course of his career, he has published thirteen books, and his photo essays have appeared in publications such as the New York Times Magazine, LIFE, and Rolling Stone. He has won numerous awards, including the World Press award for photo of the year in 1994.