No man's land

This is photographer and journalist Larry Towell's documentary account of the Palestinians. It reveals the landscape of a scarred and battered no man's land-neither fully Palestinian nor Israeli-and the daily life of the people who live there. Photographed over 10 years and completed with the support of the prestigious Henri Cartier-Bresson Award (with Towell its first recipient, in 2003), this is Towell's most important body of work to date and a landmark of photographic art and journalism. Towell describes the physical and psychological walls that divide Palestinians from Israelis and a land divided against itself in black and white photographs-many of them epic panoramas-that are simultaneously sad, haunting, breathtaking and beautiful. Larry Towell lives in rural Ontario, Canada, where he was born in 1953. He studied visual arts at York University in Toronto before beginning to use photography while working as a volunteer in Calcutta in 1976. Concentrating on long, intimate photo essays that combine historical and social concerns with sublime visual poetry, his series on El Salvador, the Mennonites and his own family are widely regarded as the best of contemporary photojournalism. His work on the Palestinians is his fourth major body of work. Towell has exhibited widely throughout the world, and his honors are a roll call of the world's leading photography awards, including World Press Photo of the Year, the POY Picture of the Year, the W. Eugene Smith Award, the Oskar Barnak, the Roloff Beny and the Eisie Award. His photographs have been published in books and magazines throughout the world, and he is a member of Magnum Photos.… (more)