An acclaimed photojournalist who has captured images of conflict around the world will be sharing his experiences in Ukraine from earlier this year at an upcoming event in Port Lambton.
Larry Towell, who is from Lambton County and was raised in the Wallaceburg area, will speak and present photos at Sacred Heart Church on July 14 for a Sacred Hearts Knights of Columbus – Port Lambton gathering. The freewill event is open to the public and will begin at 7 pm
Towell said the war in Ukraine, which started after Russia invaded the country in February, is different from anything else it has covered. He compared it to the Second World War in terms of the tactics being used and how things look on the ground.
“It’s not a NATO kind of war,” he said. “It’s an old-fashioned war with heavy artillery, bombardment. The Ukrainians are fighting from trenches and it’s by foot-by-foot, mile-by-mile, territorial takeover.”
The photographer went to Ukraine from mid-April into May. He started in Lviv, which had become a center for refugees.
However, Towell said the shelters were not as full as they once were.
“The biggest exodus had already sort of moved out,” he said. “They’re extremely well-organized in moving refugees into Poland and into Europe and even North America.”
After staying in Lviv for several days, he took a night train to Kyiv. He stayed there for days and then moved to Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine.
While there, the Ukrainian military called Towell’s fixer – a term for a local aide who assists photographers on the ground – and they were told to get out of Kharkiv or expect the worse. They took the night train back to Kyiv.
“When I was in Kyiv, the Russians had just pulled out of the areas in those small towns in the suburbs of Kyiv,” Towell said.
“I was able to document the road Highway 40 (European route E40), which at the time was littered with burned out tanks, burned bodies, and got into Bucha, where there was a big mass grave that forensics had pretty much ripened off. ”
He spent the last three days in Bucha. He said he saw body bags on the ground and learned people had buried their neighbors in their backyards.
“The Ukrainians were trying to identify people, identify cause of death and get as much oral testimony as they could from witnesses,” he said. “Since they were taking this to the world courts, they need hard, core evidence that the jury can convict on.”
Towell will also discuss and share photos from the 2014 uprising in Ukraine. This led to the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych, who had decided to make closer economic ties to Russia instead of the rest of Europe.
Time pending, he will also discuss his experiences covering conflicts in areas of the Middle East, such as Afghanistan.