THE HANDSTAND

july 2005

Larry Towell: Shooting from the heart
Magnum photographer captures 11 years of life under occupation in new exhibition

By Olivia Snaije
Special to The Daily Star
Saturday, July 02, 2005

PARIS: Tucked away on a pretty side street in Paris, an art nouveau building houses the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation. It is distinctly unsettling and instantly sobering to walk into this beautifully renovated former artist's atelier and visit the current exhibition of photographs by Larry Towell entitled "The Walls of No Man's Land: Palestine."

The black-and-white images taken by the Canadian photographer in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, over a period of 11 years, are so powerful that it is a relief to step out of the first gallery room and draw a deep breath before going into the second.

Towell has been documenting Palestinians in pictures since the end of the first Intifada in 1993. While much of his previous work focused in-depth on subjects such as landlessness, families and farming, the Magnum agency photographer also spent many years in Central America where conflict was rife. Prior to his first visit to the Middle East, Towell says he knew very little about the situation but that one day, in the early 1990s, he saw a home video on Canadian television made by an Israeli soldier who was questioning the role of the army as an occupier.

"A light went on in my head. I'd been photographing conflict in Central America as well as the culture of resistance. I wanted to see this [Israel/Palestine] for myself," he says.

Dr. Eyad Sarraj, a Palestinian psychiatrist and founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program took Towell under his wing and began to show him around refugee camps.

Towell remarks: "I thought the situation was hell on earth, but now that so much time has passed, I realize how much better is was then than it is today. Now it's hell with the temperature rising."

He returned to the area over the next decade, each time staying for about a month. In 2003 Towell was awarded the inaugural Henri Cartier-Bresson photography prize, which allowed him to complete his project on the Palestinians and the construction of Israel's "security fence." The exhibition is the result of this project and a perfect example of how art can make a compelling and moving political statement.

Towell's pictures, some taken with a panoramic camera, others with a wide angle lens, capture moments in Palestinians' lives: stoic activity in a refugee camp after an Israeli raid has reduced it to rubble, distress and hopelessness at a morgue in the early morning, the determination with which teenagers arm their slingshots, but also Israeli peace activists demonstrating with Palestinians along the separation wall.

Towell, who is also a poet and a folk musician, made soundtracks to accompany his photographs, which plunge the visitor even more deeply into another world.

"I always try to personalize a story, to make it meaningful ... by trying to bring [people] to the place, to the situation with the sights and the sounds which are all a part of the process."

Besides sounds recorded in the street, Towell's voice recounts what he sees, for example, "shadows of soldiers become giants on stilts," and registers the comment of a Palestinian "See that village on the hill that used to be there? It used to be mine."

A glass case in the second floor gallery contains collages by Towell and children's homemade slingshots abandoned after a demonstration.

In his work Towell has always been guided by the desire to be part of a process of change and to share his experiences. His photographic journey through Palestinian lives follows the political events beginning in 1993.

"When the Oslo treaty was signed I jumped onto a plane to document what I naively thought would be the creation of a new country and the end of a historical conflict that had become the toothache of the world. I'm a fairly positive guy so I thought this would be a positive thing to photograph. ... I also felt I could contribute something to recorded history because this place was all about history. From Sunday school class to television news, this place had it all."

Instead, Towell found himself documenting settlements, invasions, the dismemberment of the Palestinian infrastructure, suicide bombings and the construction of the separation wall.

"How can you compare suffering?" he asks. "I was in Gaza just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq when Ariel Sharon knew there would be no media around and was committing nightly tank raids into the Jabalia Refugee Camp and a lot of people were being killed."

Every situation was equally depressing and made him angry, says Towell. "Seeing a teenage soldier [at a checkpoint] humiliating a man his (or her) grandfather's age. ... being in the Palestinian villages around Bidu and seeing the farmers cut off from their olive groves and put in this big open-area prison. ... I was also at the sight of a bus bombing in Jerusalem. I only saw the wreckage and the hoses washing away the blood. Then Sharon towed the bus to Abu Dis to place it up against the wall as a statement. I thought that was depressing. The wall will only inflame the hatred and cause deeper resentment and humiliation. Maybe the saddest thing is the hatred and humiliation."

Out of the violence came a few rays of hope which Towell captured on his recent trips when he spent time working with Israeli peace activists.

"It was inspiring to see young Jewish Israelis protesting on the route of the wall along with Palestinian farmers."

Towell unquestionably succeeds in bringing the Palestinians' plight to the rest of the world with his photographs. It's interesting to note the comments in the exhibition's visitor's book: "Very chilling to see but I was heartened by the Israeli-Palestinian demonstrations. We need to see more and hear more," wrote one American.

"I hope this exhibition and many others like it will change the situation in the Middle East," wrote Nathan from Tel Aviv, Israel.

Dr. Eyad Sarraj, in Gaza, had this to say about Larry Towell: "He is not only an exceptional photographer equipped with a rare eye for humanity but a unique human being with an extra sensitive soul. ... I see in his photos the pain and the joy, the sadness and the excitement, the shining hope and the gloom of despair. I see in his photos myself and all human beings."

"The Walls of No Man's Land: Palestine" runs until August 6, 2005 at the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris. The photographs from the exhibition are published by Textuel and distributed in the Middle East by Le Seuil. For more info www.henricartierbresson.org