"Larry Towell: Palestine, El Salvador and Home"
1999-12-05 until 2000-01-09
Cambridge Galleries
Cambridge, ON, CA Canada

Larry Towell is a full member of the highly exclusive photographic agency Magnum, which was started in 1947 by, among others, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, and which is still probably the most difficult 'club' to enter in the world. Towell's work has been published in almost two hundred magazine and periodical articles, included in ten major photographic anthologies, and has been seen in twenty-seven solo exhibitions, as well as in countless group shows. He has published seven books. His most recent, Then, Palestine has just been published in the United States by Aperture. He has been documenting the lives of the Mexican Mennonites for the last ten years for a book soon to be published and is currently working on a ninth book, Family Album, a collection of photographs of the artist's family.

Towell has won numerous prestigious awards. Most recently, he received the first Roloff Beny Photography Book Award for El Salvador (April, 1999). Other awards include the Alfred Eisentaedt Award for Portraiture Essay (1998), the Oskar Barnack Award (1996), the Ernst Haas Foundation Award (1995), the World Press Photo of the Year Award (1994), and the World Press Photo Award (1993).

Towell has an interest in land and landlessness. Land makes people into who they are, and when they lose it, they lose their identity. But Towell believes that all photography is essentially about the family. War and famine is about families in dire conditions, he says. He states that between travels, it makes sense to take pictures of my own family. I leave the camera in the kitchen, and occasionally just take it off the fridge to take pictures. The family is a very important force in one's life. The photojournalist has to learn to negotiate through life. When you have a family it teaches you to do just that, to give and to take of life.

Larry Towell was born in Chatham, Ontario in 1953. He studied visual arts at York University in Toronto. From 1979 to 1989, he taught folk music to make a living. He lives with his wife, Ann, and their four children on a 75-acre farm in Shetland, Ontario.

The Cambridge Galleries exhibition will feature 20 images from each of the Palestine, El Salvador and Family Album portfolios, and will be accompanied by an illustrated brochure with essays by Phil Vanderwall and Gordon Hatt.

Cambridge Galleries Queen's Square 20 Grand Avenue North, Cambridge, Ont. N1S 2K6 TEL 519.621.0460 FAX 519.621.2080

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