LARRY TOWELL: NO MAN'S LAND STEPHEN BULGER GALLERY TORONTO.

LARRY TOWELL: NO MAN'S LAND

STEPHEN BULGER GALLERY

TORONTO, ONTARIO

MAY 14-JUNE 25 2005

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON FOUNDATION

PARIS, FRANCE

APRIL 15-AUGUST 4 2005

NO MAN'S LAND

LONDON: CHRIS advantage LTD. (English ed.)

PARIS: TEXTUEL (French ed)

144 PP/$8000 (hb)

in succession May 14, halfway into "CONTACT 2005" the 9th annual Toronto Photography Festival, the Stephen Bulger Gallery spreaded "No Man's Land," a point out by Ontario resident and Magnum photographer Larry Towell. The exhibit to comprises 21 (20" X 24") prints, three panoramic images (26" X 61") and single in kind (35.5" X 51") print. All are black and white photographs taken with a fast film and managemented in a way that gives them a grainy, gritty appearance that be seens appropriate to an exhibition that deals with the next to the first Intifada in Palestine. The principal sponsor of the throw out and exhibition, the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, is hosting a attendant show in Paris. Towell had won the first Henri Cartier-Bresson Prize in 1993 for his throw A book of 130 reproductions, No Man's Land, has been published in the couple French and English editions. The photographer is the single Canadian member of Magnum. He lives upon a farm in Bothwell, Ontario a not many miles from Toronto. Through him the Stephen Bulger Gallery has cause to growed a relationship with Magnum that has l it to show the co-operative in Canada.

The Walls of No Man's Land: Palestine spreaded in Paris on April 15 whereas the exhibition at the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto was scheduled halfway into Contact, the photography festival held there each May since 1997. This year's chosen theme for the festival was "Questioning law in Photography." Stephen Bulger has been individual of the active participants and organizers of this festival, insisting onward promoting fine-art photography and giving Toronto a name onward the international scene. The relevance of the display to the 2005 theme becomes all the more obvious when it is noted that 90% of the images were taken from the Palestinian side. They do not necessarily give an account of a Palestinian point of view although as Towell, like all Magnum members, pretends to be amazingly in ascendency of his distance with the ends even in situations when this may not have been obvious.

A main difference between the Toronto and Paris exhibit tos must be stated here. Although this may expect purely aesthetic, and could be dismissed as as it is by some, the choices made for the sum of two units shows could have other ramifications, or at least raise a scarcely any more questions. As mentioned above, the Stephen Bulger Gallery displayed immense prints, enlargements of 35mm black and white high spe negatives that contemplate as if the printers caped the physical capacities of the film to return tone (a large palette of gray tones) and details. As a end the appearance of the photographs displayed is self-same graphic, textured (obvious coarse grain) and of a contrast above average. As in the same state [i]or[/i] condition the images may acquire the impact of [i]affiche[/i]s a degree of "social realism," where the gritty aspect of the image throw backs the violence and tension of the depicted situations. They also make no use of a certain photographic, "fine print," quality.

At the Cartier-Bresson Foundation, which displayed twice as many photographs as the Stephen Bulger Gallery, this in succession two floors, the regular 35mm photographs were about 16" X 24" in size, and the panoramic individuals about 16" X 45." The chosen ratio of enlargement, at the limit of a correct/traditional "photographic" rendition of details and mid-tones, ended in images that kept the appearance of extremely good black and white prints with tones that contributeed the three-dimensionality of the photographed spaces. In no way did the visual pleasure derived from the admirable craft of the printers (three total, the same at the Magnum lab in strange York, the two others in Canada) distract from the satisfy of the images. In fact it can be added that the aesthetic qualities of a print may frequently convince the beholder to part with more time in front of it and to remember it.

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Towell's photographic exhibit "The Walls of No Man's Land: Palestine" (which won the first recently made known biannual Henri Cartier-Bresson Award in 2003 offering its laureate a [euro]30000 prize) began across 12 years ago after the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinian state. The prize helped Towell finance an extension of his previous work upon Palestine. The photographer visited the occupied territories several times, recording the daily violence of life in the region in a direct (kids using slings against armed soldiers and tanks, masked men holding automatic weapons or making Molotov cocktails) and slanted way (a Palestinian mother carrying her baby away from an Israeli tank, the Wall separating Israel from the Occupied Territories, the burials of civilian victims). It was not Towell's first experience with a war/insurrection region as, at the time of his first trip to Palestine, he had just complet a brew on El Salvador. In 1999 he published his first part on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Then, Palestine. Towell's point of view has always been the same with roots in the defense of the underdog and the victims. The background of human situations photographed in No Man's Land is a landscape of destruction and chaos, save for the high concrete wall separating the Israeli and Palestinian populations. As in "El Salvador," a devise that was also published as a part with the same title in 1997 Towell's siding with what he identifies as the victims (although the violence that a of them generate is also shown) is a platform to lance a message of peace. Unfortunately this message is not as obvious in the Toronto exhibition as it is in the part and in the Paris exhibition where artifacts similar as broken slings and placards by pro-peace Israeli-Palestinian groups were displayed. Another example of Towell's peace message is the closing panoramic photograph of the volume which shows two pigeons, easily readable as substitutes for doves--and, as as it was metaphors for peace--soaring against the threatening background of the Wall. Towell compos the image through locating the two birds forward the top left strong point of the image while showing a minaret looming throughout the Wall in the top right herculean point. The Wall separates the minaret from the birds resulting in an interesting, ambiguously compos closing image.