The History War

The History War is a book of photographs, collages and
ephemera beginning with a timeline that starts in the 5th
century.

It’s six chapters document the Maidan uprising, the
Chernobyl wasteland where Soviets began to lose faith in
the system, the eastern Donbass of neglected coal miners
and de-occupied ruins, an embed with the Ukrainian Army,
the separatists, and finally the Russian invasion of Ukraine
including crimes against humanity in Bucha.

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.

The son of a car repairman, Towell grew up in a large family in rural Ontario, Canada. During studies in visual arts at Toronto’s York University, he was given a camera and taught how to process black and white film. A stint of volunteer work in Calcutta in 1976 provoked Towell to photograph and write. In 1984, he became a freelance photographer and writer focusing on the dispossessed, exile and peasant rebellion. He completed projects on the Nicaraguan Contra war, on the relatives of the disappeared in Guatemala, and on American Vietnam War veterans who had returned to Vietnam to rebuild the country. His first published magazine essay, Paradise Lost, exposed the ecological consequences of the catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. He became a Magnum nominee in 1988 and a full member in 1993. 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. His fascination with landlessness also led him to the Mennonite migrant workers of Mexico, an eleven-year project completed in 2000.