Larry Towell
El Salvador
Introduction by Mark Danner
A deeply compelling look at a tumultuous
country, Larry Towell's photographs are at once powerful and compassionate, revealing a
country of violence, heartbreak, strength, and dignity.
Magnum photographer Larry Towell first traveled to
El Salvador in 1986 as a member of a human rights
delegation. Since the beginning of the civil war in 1979,
50,000 people had been killed, 25 percent of the
population were refugees, and death squads terrorized the
nation. The war ended in the early 1990s and Towell had
thoroughly documented both the war and its aftermath.
Towell is perhaps one of the finest
photojournalists since Cartier-Bresson. In these haunting
photographs, we see a world in which everyone becomes a
combatant and every place a war zone. Yet amid the brutality
and death there is a harsh beauty people grieve and
move on; peasant women wash clothes and nurse infants
under the eyes of soldiers; children with hopeful faces
forage the dumpsites for food.
Larry Towell is a member of Magnum Photos and a
freelance photographer and writer. He lives in Ontario, Canada.
Mark Danner is the author of The Massacre of El Mozote: A Parable of
the Cold War.
- 1997 / paperback original / ISBN 0-393-31428-6
- 1997 / hardcover / ISBN 0-393-03944-7
- 62 duotones / 128 pages / photography/photojournalism/Latin America
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