The videotape captured in Afghanistan shows a child walking on his new artificial legs. He uses crutches. He has the face of an angel. He stares at the camera and hobbles along.
“These are real stories, and real stories are more incredible [unbelievable] “than fiction,” says Canadian photographer Larry Towell in his film, “in a voice-over.” The Man I Left Behind. He captured the footage himself years ago. “But the real stories are more important because they’re true. For example, 7-year-old Khalil Hajar picked up a toy he thought was real, threw it on the floor and it exploded. That’s what I mean about real things being unbelievable. ‘It would have been better if my child had died,’ his father told me. I thought that was unbelievable too.”
According to a recent UN report, landmines claimed more than 7,000 lives worldwide in 2020, including 1,872 children, who sometimes mistake the explosive devices for a toy.
“I’ve always seen my work as a whole, with the projects and assignments being linked, because I’m always dealing with human rights issues and issues related to land and dispossession,” Larry Towell said in an interview from his home in southern Ontario.
At over 70, he is still the only Canadian member of the prestigious Magnum Photo cooperative agency. He has notably published a masterful album on the Mennonite communities in Canada and Mexico. His documentary synthesizes four decades with displaced people around the world, in Palestine, Central America, Ukraine and Afghanistan.
“When it became possible to capture and record video and audio, realizing that I was in places where many people would never find themselves, I told myself that I had to accumulate as much information as possible to tell stories with these images and sounds. I knew that I would succeed in one way or another, at some point.”
Art is a way of telling stories. Journalism also tells stories, but without inventing them.
Inside the mind of a photojournalist
The idea was sparked in 2011 in Amsterdam, when Larry Towell, who is also a singer-songwriter, was giving a concert as part of a World Press Photo exhibition. The images of the performance captured by filmmaker Matthieu Rytz were then edited by Hubert Hayaud, two compatriots. The result was very popular with the main person concerned, who invited the duo to view and organize his video material, nearly 200 hours of tape ultimately used for the documentary signed by the three of them. It therefore seems quite logical that the result will be presented Thursday as a North American premiere at the 2024 World Press Photo exhibition, on display at the Marché Bonsecours in Montreal.
“Larry invited us to his house and I remember that Google Maps couldn’t find the way at the time,” explains Hubert Hayaud, also a photographer (he periodically collaborates with Duty). “I recognized the house I had seen in his books. We sat down in front of the computer in his large studio. We looked at the images and it was immediately incredible.”
He immediately felt like he was on the shoulder of a photojournalist on assignment around the world, a feeling that is preserved in the film. “The images also show a bit of what goes on in the mind of a photojournalist in the field,” adds the editor. “We see him meeting people. We see him getting bored. Even the flaws in the images are interesting because they serve to desacralize the role of the photographer.”
So it still took a decade to find funding, link the images, find the theme of the territory and finally give birth to the film, frankly exciting and touching, at once informative, impressionistic and poetic. Let’s just say human, with all that implies in terms of shadows and lights.
All the elements come together and fit together to create a unique work. The alternation between (let’s say) raw scenes captured by color videos and photographic compositions often in black and white gives rhythm to the documentary. This very simple choice allows us to better understand the extent to which Larry Towell draws on reality to magnify it.
After the interview, he recalled, by email, that the Magnum agency had been founded by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Frank Capa, that is, “an artist and a war photographer.” So could he himself claim the prestigious dual tutelage?
“I’m not sure what the difference is, honestly,” he says in an interview. “I used to think of myself as an artist. I make music, I studied art. Art is a way of telling stories. Journalism is also telling stories, but not making them up. I don’t want to get into a long conversation about art versus journalism. I think of myself as a journalist now, and I think we need more journalism, more honesty, more truth-telling, more storytelling of what’s happening beyond our little circle, our little refuge.”
Rage against the machine
The editing of the film also commands admiration. All the elements are mobilized to introduce links between the images captured years and thousands of kilometers apart. A cripple seen from behind in Ukraine allows the jump to Afghanistan, where another one-legged man appears in a frontal portrait. The red of blood and that of roses placed in a coffin follow one another in Ukraine. Even the sounds sometimes serve to lead from one end of the world to the other, again to accentuate the idea that everything is connected, including in horror or happiness.
The documentary’s title is borrowed from a song by the multi-talented creator. Mr. Hayaud likes its ambiguity. “It’s pretty and a little mysterious,” he says. “This title can evoke many things and that’s fine. This man left behind could be Larry on his farm in Ontario when he goes on a mission. Or the guy in the field when he returns home.”
In the film, he is seen with his family, his wife and children. “I wanted people to understand where I came from,” says Towell. “So I retraced my own path to this piece of land that I own, explaining that this land was taken from the Aboriginal people. More dispossession. A photojournalist doesn’t live out of his suitcases and doesn’t travel the world all the time. You need anchors in life.”
This assumed personalization ultimately serves to remind us that a human, journalist and/or artist, is behind the lens while technological and media mutations threaten the production and dissemination of images of the realities of the world. The credits also include a note explaining that artificial intelligence had no part in the making of the film. “True stories are more incredible than fiction…”