Book Signing with Larry Towell: November 26, 2022, 2 – 5pm
Call or email the gallery to preorder your copy.
The Stephen Bulger Gallery is pleased to present a book signing with Larry Towell in the Reading Room gallery, with a selection of works on display. The event will honour the release of the second, revised edition of his celebrated book The Mennonites (GOST Books, 2022)
Larry Towell photographed the Old Colony Mennonites in rural Ontario and Mexico between 1990 and 1999. The resulting black and white photographs—accompanied by an extensive text drawn from diary notes and ‘the silt of the memory’—formed Towell’s landmark book, The Mennonites, first published in 2000. This revised and updated second edition revisits the project and includes 40 previously unpublished photographs.
Larry Towell first encountered the Mennonites near his home in Ontario, Canada, and his friendship with them has gained him unique access to their communities. Originating in Europe in the sixteenth century, the Mennonites are a Protestant religious sect, related to the Amish.
Rather than compromise their way of life, they have continually been forced to migrate around the world to maintain their freedom to live as they choose. The greatest numbers are now found in Mexico, and many live or regularly migrate to work in rural Canada. Towell has been photographing Mennonites in Canada and Mexico for over ten years, and this collection, “The Mennonites”, creates a unique and intimate portrait of an often misunderstood people. In addition to his images, Towell’s own texts tell in poignant and descriptive detail his experiences with the Mennonite communities: the harshness and poverty of their rural existence, the disciplines and contradictions of their religion, their hunger for land and work, and the constant struggle to keep the modern world at bay.
A Selection of Books by Towell will be available for purchase including Afghanistan (Aperture, 2014), and The World from my Front Porch (Stephen Bulger Gallery and The Archive of Modern Conflict, 2008).
