Collection search - Larry Towell Fonds [graphic material]

Record information – Brief
1
Larry Towell Fonds [graphic material]

Hierarchical level:

Fonds

Date:

1990-1999.

Reference:

R11605-0-2-E

Type of material:

Photographs

Found in:

Archives / Collections and Fonds

Item ID number:

3326160

Context of this record:

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Larry Towell Fonds
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Record information – Details

Fonds includes:

36 lower level description(s)
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Date(s):

1990-1999.

Place:

Ontario and Mexico:

Place of creation:

Ontario

Extent:

40 photographs : b&w silver gelatine ; 16 x 20 in.
Positive Paper Silver - gelatine

Language of material:

English

Scope and content:

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The fonds consists of 40 b&w silver gelatine prints by photographer Larry Towell. Towell spent ten years photographing Mennonite communities in rural Ontario and Mexico. Starting with a friendship he made with a Mennonite family he met near his own home in Ontario, he has had a unique access to their lives, gradually being introduced to the wider community and making trips to visit the colonies in Mexico.

The Mennonites photographed in this project belong to the conservative Old Colony sect, which separated from the main body of Canadian prairie Mennonites in the late nineteenth century. In 1922, approximately 5000 of these Canadian prairie Mennonites, attempting to resist modernization and assimilation into Canadian society, migrated to Cuauhtémoc Mexico, where they were promised religious freedom in exchange for their farming skills. The community expanded to several colonies throughout Mexico in the next seventy years.

The first Mennonites had begun returning to Canada in the 1950s, including the migrant workers who came to southwestern Ontario in the 1980s looking for work, as their Mexican farms continued to be devastated by drought and the resultant poverty. Larry Towell, who sharecrops in addition to being a photographer, met some members of the community in 1989 and, gaining the trust of some, began photographing them in both southwestern Ontario and in subsequent trips to Mexico in 1990. This collection of photographs represents only a small portion of this long term project, which was published as The Mennonites. A Biographical Sketch, by Phaidon in 2000, including text by Larry Towell.

Provenance:

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Towell, Larry, 1953-

Biography/Administrative history:

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Towell, Larry, 1953- : Larry Towell is an internationally known Canadian documentary photographer, and the only living Canadian member of the Magnum Photo Agency, founded by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, and based in Paris, France. Towell received a Fine Arts degree from York University in the early 1970s, and shortly thereafter began to travel the world with his camera in hand. He has photographed historically important conflicts in Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Palestine, Israel and Lebanon. He has completed photo stories in India and Vietnam, and on the Mexican Mennonite migrant workers in southwestern Ontario, as well as the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. His work also often includes audio and video documentation, as well as prose, poetry and song written and performed by Mr. Towell.

Larry Towell's work has been published extensively in books, magazines, newspapers and on compact disk. His work has been exhibited broadly in Europe and North American, and many of his photographs are housed in major collections. His reportage has appeared in magazines that include the New York Time, Life, GEO, Stern and the Globe and Mail. Mr. Towell has been the recipient of many photography awards, including several World Press and Pictures of the Year Awards, a Eugene Smith, the Oskar Barnak, Ernst Haas, the inaugural Roloff Beny Book Award, Alfred Eisenstadt and a Hasselblad Award. He was the first recipient of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award in 2003. In 2005 he was awarded France's Prix Nadar for his book of photographs. No Man's Land.

His publications include: In the Wake of Katrina (2006); No Man's Land, 2005; The Mennonites, 2000; Then Palestine, 1999; El Salvador, 1997; House on Ninth Street, 1994, The Prison Poems of Ho Chi Minh, 1992; Somoza's Last Stand, 1990; Gifts of War, 1988; and Burning Cadillacs, 1983.

Finding aid:

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(Electronic) The finding aid is a list of the photographs. (90: Open)

Source:

Private

Related control no.:

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2006-00433-6
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Conditions of access:

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Graphic (photo)

[Consultation90 Open]

Volume [R11605] 1

[Consultation 90 Open]

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Date modified:: 2024-07-24