Photographer Larry Towell first visited Ukraine in 2014, witnessing the final days of the country’s Maiden Revolution. He has returned many times since, The History War being the final product of his work. Taking on the format of a scrapbook, Towell combines personal notes with ephemera to supplement his photographs, challenging the possibilities of a photobook and demonstrating how storytelling can be woven together by different fabrics into one story.
Larry Towell ended up in Ukraine not by any grand plan, but rather by a series of coincidences that set him on a 10-year project covering the country. In 2014 Towell was at the Aperture offices in New York, finishing up some final details on his book on Afghanistan, when he decided to stop by the Magnum Photo office that was not far away. And it struck him that he did not have another project lined up now that his Afghanistan book was done.
But when he got to the office, he learned that Magnum had a photographer in Kiev who was teaching a workshop, and had said that if anyone was coming over, he could set them up with one of his students as an interpreter. Towell then called another photographer friend of his, who told him that he was heading to Ukraine, and offered Towell a place to stay. So, within an hour, Towell had his ducks lined up in a row, and had his flight booked.
“I didn’t know anything about Ukraine. I didn’t know the history of Ukraine. I didn’t know much about Eastern Europe,” Towell told me via zoom from his house in Canada. “My first trip, I was only there for 10 or 12 days, and everything happened in those days. That was when most people were killed. The insurrection was the most violent on the side of the Russians. And then Yanukovych fled. And then there was this caravan of vehicles that went down to his estate. They broke down the gates and we went inside. I looked around and then I went home. And on the flight home I said, what was that all about?”
Towell, who was born in Canada in 1953, has had a very varied career. He grew up in a large family in Ontario and studied visual arts at Toronto’s York University where he was given a camera and taught how to process black and white film. After volunteer work in Calcutta in 1976, he began to photograph and write. When he returned to Canada, he taught folk music to support himself and his family and became a freelance photographer and writer in 1984.
“I spent my life sort of trailing American imperialism in Latin America, and now I saw the face of the other side of the Cold War. I became interested in following it.” He explained to me. “Every time I’ve gone somewhere, like when I went to the Middle East for the first time, I didn’t know much about the Palestinians either. But when you’re thrown in the midst of that level of obvious repression and occupation, and then all of a sudden you wake up and say ‘What is my responsibility here?’”
Towell’s photographs from that first trip to Ukraine show the civilians behind makeshift barricades with home-made weapons, heavily shielded police and the aftermath and the dead in a half-destroyed Maidan Square. That trip sealed his interest in the country, and what was going on. And this drove him to look deeper into the story. Once back in Canada, Towell began researching Ukraine.
“I could see once I began to understand the history of Ukraine, that there was a big story here. And I always like to keep my finger on the pulse of world events. And I said, this is much bigger than it first appears.” Towell told me. ” Right when I left after the first trip, a friend of mine who was Russian told me ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be back. This isn’t over.’ And I thought it was, I thought, oh, great, they had a freedom. Well, within days, of course, Putin invaded Crimea, and then it was very clear that he was sending advisors into the Donbas.”
Towell did return, and numerous times. The second chapter of the book focuses on his time in the wastelands around Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986, which resulted in many Soviets losing faith in the system. Following chapters focus on Towell’s time in the 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, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, including the exhumation of civilian graves and exposing crimes against humanity in Bucha.
Larry Towell wants his book to be more than just more photographs of what is happening in Ukraine. It is also about looking at the past to understand the present, and the book begins with a timeline tracing Ukraine’s evolution from the 5th century and its long struggle for independence. The book also works to challenge a world oversaturated with news pictures where just more photographs from Ukraine would be quickly lost in the shuffle.
“There are 57,000 photographs taken in the world every second. And a lot of it is done by citizen journalists. And a lot of it is done by people shooting selfies or their girlfriends. The world is full of horrible photography. The world is focused on Ukraine as it should be, and a few other places like Palestine right now. But there’s a lot of it, but it doesn’t seem to go anywhere and it doesn’t stick. And so as the book was about history, I wanted the photographs to be about history, not just the moment, but freezing something that would last historically. So trying to take good photographs is number one, and then trying to use them in such a way that I created a history book”
The History War also 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, including postcards, found family pictures, playing cards, cigarette packets, and trash left behind by Russian soldiers that supplement his photographs.
“In terms of artifacts, I guess maybe it’s just my history as an artist studying art, the history of art, looking at the little details,” Towell tells me about his collecting ephemera. “An archeologist would never study the statue with eyes out of jades. They go to the garbage piles of societies behind the statue. They look at the garbage people left behind that tells them everything: what they ate; how they dressed; how they lived; how big they were; how long they lived. All that stuff is in the garbage pits. So that’s why I collect garbage.”
But in the end, what does Towell hope people take away from his book? Is he hoping it will change the situation? And what does he hope people learn from it?
“Do you think I’m going to change the world? Do I think I’m going to? No,” Towell muses.” I do like to be involved in the debates of our day with some kind of integrity. Everybody’s involved with debates of the day online these days, and it has no integrity. But so what’s going on with me? This is my experience. This is what I saw. This is what I think. This is my opinion. And this is why I think the way I do and why I think I’m right. It’s just a way of justifying your existence in this world. That’s all.”
The History War is published by GOST Books and can be purchased through their website here.
