Photographer chronicles the plight of the landless

By Guy D’Astolfo

YOUNGSTOWN — The McDonough Museum’s latest exhibition is a midcareer retrospective of one of North America’s most respected photographers.

“Larry Towell: The World from My Porch, which opens Friday and runs through Nov. 13, encapsulates the work of Towell, a Canadian who has traveled the globe to document the plight of people displaced by war, nature or economic forces.

The exhibition includes more than 120 images, plus artifacts such as Mennonite clothing, shell casings from war zones, martyr posters and a water-soaked photo album from a Katrina survivor. It also integrates his original music and video compositions.

Towell’s show includes photos he’s taken of native people, and his own family, in southern Ontario. “I live in a house built by a land surveyor who worked for the British, who were taking land from natives,” he said in a phone interview. “[The surveyor] left his diaries in my house and I read them.”

The photographer’s work afield makes up the rest of the display. “I’m a photojournalist and I work in areas of conflict,” he said. “Areas where people are struggling with the loss of land, and therefore the loss of personal identity, and they’re struggling to get that back.”

His travels have brought him to Central America during the rebellion in El Salvador, Mexico, the refugee camps of the Gaza Strip, Afghanistan and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Towell said he is drawn to issues of landlessness. His findings are not only documented in the exhibition, but also in a book he has published by the same title.

Close to his home is the plight of Mennonites, who left Canada many years ago for Mexico, where they started agriculture-based communities and lived separately from Mexican culture. These Mennonites now find themselves forced out by Mexico’s economic woes. Thousands of members of the plain-dressed religious sect have lost their land and now live peripatetic lives that often bring them back to Canada to work as migrant farmhands.

Towell is also a poet, musician and storyteller. He will perform at 7 p.m. Oct. 9 in Bliss Recital Hall on the Youngstown State University campus. Accompanied by harmonica virtuoso Mike Stevens, a Grand Ole Opry regular, Towell will use slides and video to illustrate his tales, original songs and poetry.

Towell is a member of Magnum Photos, an elite co-operative of photographers who chronicle the world and interpret its peoples and issues. He is the only Canadian in the group, whose membership stands at 50.