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The History War - Signed

The History War - Signed

by Larry Towell

£85.00
£85.00
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Pre-order. Expected September 2024. US orders shipping October 2024.

The History War is a book of photographs, collages and ephemera which begins with a timeline tracing Ukraine’s evolution from the 5th century and its long struggle for independence. The book is divided into six narratives documenting the events and people Larry Towell encountered in his many journeys to Ukraine.

Please note that the book comes in two colourways—a yellow cover with blue endpapers and a blue cover with yellow endpapers. A colour will be allocated to customers at random. 

More about this book

Towell first visited Ukraine at the time of the Maidan uprising in 2014, witnessing the final days of the violent clashes between the protestors and police in Kyiv. His photographs show the civilians behind makeshift barricades with home-made weapons, the heavily shielded police and the aftermath of the dead in a half-destroyed Maidan Square. It was this event which led to Towell’s long-term commitment to Ukraine and compelled him to return over the years.

The second chapter focuses on Towell’s time in the wastelands of Chernobyl, site of history’s worst
nuclear disaster in 1986 which resulted in many Soviets losing faith in the system. The following chapters focus on Towell’s time on eastern Donbass—a region of neglected coal miners and de-occupied ruins, an embed with the Ukrainian Army in Bakhmut, time with separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk, and finally, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the exhumation of civilian
graves and crimes against humanity in Bucha.

Described by Towell as ‘one person’s book on Ukraine’ The History War challenges the possibilities of a photobook and demonstrates how storytelling can be woven together by different fabrics. Taking on the format of a scrapbook, Towell combines
personal notes with ephemera—postcards, found family pictures, playing cards, cigarette packets and rubbish left behind by Russian soldiers to supplement his images.

‘I believe this project is an important testament to a political crisis that will shape international relations and reverberate through the decades to come. It also challenges a world oversaturated with news pictures.’

Published September 2024
199 x 285 mm
372 pages
ISBN 978-1-915423-47-4

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In the press

  • LFI magazine

    Publico

    FotoCult

    Blind Magazine

  • '...an extremely unique and powerful work, where the photographer's reports and mementoes almost seem to burst out of the cover, and for sure go way beyond classic photo-journalistic war reporting.'
    LFI magazine

The author

  • Larry Towell (born 1953, Canada), was the son of a car repairman and grew up in a large family in rural Ontario. He studied visual arts at Toronto’s York University where he was given a camera and taught how to process black and white film. Following volunteer work in Calcutta in 1976, he began to photograph and write. Upon his return to Canada, he taught folk music to support himself and his family and became a freelance photographer and writer in 1984, focusing on the dispossessed, exile, and peasant rebellion when he completed testimonial projects on the Nicaraguan Contra war and the relatives of the disappeared in Guatemala. His first published magazine essay, Paradise Lost, exposed the ecological consequences of the catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. In 1996, Towell completed a project based on ten years of reportage in El Salvador, followed the next year by a major book, Then Palestine. With the help of the inaugural Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, he finished a second highly acclaimed book on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in 2005, and in 2008 released the award-winning The World From My Front Porch, a project on his own family in rural Ontario where he sharecrops a 75-acre farm. Afghanistan was released in 2014 based on six years of reportage on that war.

    Larry is also a gifted musician and songwriter, author of five music/poetry CDs, and a soon-to-be-released triple vinyl LP of original ballads entitled The Man I Left Behind.