The Mennonites

In a world where the media has been at least as guilty as any in presenting the bland Technicolor conformity of Americana as ubiquitous idyll, Larry Towell's The Mennonites stands as a gentle reproach. The Mennonites are a Protestant religious sect originating in Europe in the 16th century who take their name from Menno Simons, a Catholic priest impressed by the Anabaptist martyrs of Reformation Holland. They are probably most easily understood through their relation to the Amish. Continually fighting to preserve the freedom to live as required by their religious tenets they have historically been forced to continuously migrate. Now an inward-looking community based mainly in Canada and Mexico, Larry Towell's black-and-white photographic study of the sect shows how a harsh rural poverty and a deep abiding faith collide. Rarely has such harsh documentary photography been so painterly, rarely has a photographer written as fascinatingly as does Towell in his brief, accompanying texts. This is a poignant, human, illuminating collection of photographs that shows how the struggle to keep away from the world both binds and divides. Towell's photography shows us that what seems so particular, so different, is in fact quite universal. A beautiful book. --Mark Thwaite

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a considered, intimate and honest insight - Rated
Canadian Magnum photographer Larry Towell, appropriately for this production one of the priesthood of documentary, first came across the fundamentalist Mennonite Christian sect near his home in Ontario. His book, before considering the geographical space they inhabit, begins by locating the sect and its origins in history. Mennonites take their name from their founder, sixteenth century Catholic priest Menno Simons who left the Catholic Church to found his own movement. Simons embraced adult baptism, pacifism and, worst of all in the eyes of the hierarchies of the time, the separation of church and state. Thousands were martyred for their new found faith and gradually different branches embarked for the more religiously tolerant lands of America.

Time seems not to have served the Mennonites well. Apart from occasional, but continuing, conflicts over their pacifism and refusal to adapt, their work ethic and sense of community allowed them to prosper until the first half of the twentieth century. The age of the machine however seems almost to have been a conflict too far for this people out of time. Now spread widely across both the North and South American continents, their four hundred year diaspora continues as the differing groups attempt to cope with the world of the new millennium. Towell’s first contact was with a dispossessed Mennonite migrant family. Photography is frowned upon in the Mennonite code but the photographer built a bond of trust which overcame this hurdle. Alterations in trade agreements between bordering geographical nations, and the Mennonites own exponentially increasing population, have brought forth unwanted, unsought and unwelcome changes to their traditional way of life. Fierce traditionalists, the Mennonites speak a “Low German” dialect and their written language is principally restricted to scriptural texts in “High German”, which in turn accounts for considerable illiteracy. Their past was based around agricultural expertise, hard work and land ownership but today much of the Mennonite Nation bears closer resemblance to the dust bowl migrant workers of the thirties witnessed in the photography of the Farm Security Administration.

Towell pulls no punches in his vivid descriptions of this people he has come to love. Far from any sanitised Hollywood representation of a pious, plain cloth wearing religious community that shuns the twenty-first century Towell clearly exposes them to the public gaze. The Mennonites have many of the social problems recognised or ignored by other societies. Alcoholism for example, the disease of the destitute, appears not to have passed them by untended and their attitude to modern medicine doesn’t help them. There are still colonies where the horse and buggy reigns supreme. In others electricity is shunned and the single concession to mechanisation is elderly iron wheeled John Deere tractors. The itinerant migrant families cross the continent in overloaded, unlicensed, elderly flat bed trucks; moving from one farm to the next picking and planting their way for illegally low salaries. Officialdom in Canada, Mexico and the USA either turns a blind eye to their plight or, in the case of only slightly more socially elevated US Border Guards, “treats them like trash”.

This beautifully produced book comes elegantly cloth bound in black along with a slipcase to contain it’s narrative. Black seems apposite, both for the piety of the people it describes and the manner in which they are ignored or abused by the inhabitants of a century more civilised than the one in which they choose to live. Larry Towell, proving himself as articulate with the pen as he is with the Leica, offers his reader a considered, intimate and honest insight into the joys and hardships of this invisible nation. Highly recommended.

Artistically sound, but let down by very poor repro quality - Rated
I have recently bought many stunning books by this publisher; unfortunately 'The Menonnites' is not one of them.

The print quality of this book renders the work of this master photographer as a washed out, lifeless dirge of endless shades of grey. The range of tones in many of the pictures are of newspaper quality while some are much worse. Hugely disappointing.

Buy 'Wintereisse' instead by the same publisher, which is the exact opposite - a work of art, it brings drab and forsaken environments alive with emotion and awash with beautiful muted colour.

An in-depth photographic essay by a concerned photographer - Rated
Larry Towell again presents a book following in the tradition of "El Salvador" and "Then Palestine". Photographing the lives of the Mennonite Communities of Canada and Mexico, Towell fully gained the trust of this Protestant religious sect that dates back to the 16th Century. Rather than having to comprimise their way of life to modern outside pressures they have chose to migrate to maintain thier freedom. Over a period of ten years Towell has meticulously documented in black and white their lives in the harsh and poverty stricken environment in which they live as they battle to keep the modern world at bay.