Windows on the soul Larry Towell: The Mennonites

OFTEN likened to the Amish communities made famous throughout the world by the film Witness, the Mennonites, who took their name from a Dutch priest, Menno Simon, also trace their roots back to 16th-century Protestantism. At the time they were considered radical, but in the centuries since their founding the world has changed. Communities of Mennonites remain in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa, but worldwide numbers are now less than a million.

Not quite so rigidly separatist in outlook as their Amish cousins, the Mennonites still adhere to a strong belief in reading the Scriptures and an emphasis on personal responsibility and service to others - which may yet see them being re-labelled "radical" in contemporary terms. Their aversion to modern technology would not, you might think, make them ideal subjects for photographic study. But from 1990 to 1999, photographer Larry Towell travelled with a colony of Mennonites as they followed the harvests from Canada to Mexico and back, trying to thrash a living out of the ravaged lands. The piercing depth and range of images currently on display in Edinburgh - their only UK showing so far - reveal the trust, perhaps kinship, that was established between Towell and his subjects.

This bond is more understandable the more you know about Towell. With his wife, Ann, and their four children, he sharecrops 75 acres in rural Ontario. His empathy with travelling workers can be traced through a distinguished photographic life - he is a member of the elite photographic co-operative, Magnum - which has seen him travel to Vietnam, Gaza and Mexico.

The Mennonite world revealed in his photos is not one where common comforts can be found. A life of basic farm work in the Mexican nether regions of Zacatecas or Chihuahua offers little to solicit envy. There is an overwhelming presence of dust, a grainy feel ever-present in the finely textured black-and-white images. Domestic scenes speak of everyday voluntary deprivation, in a way which both humbles and questions our own convenience-shopping indulgence.

In portraiture terms, the importance of the eyes is rarely better exposed than it is in Towell’s work. From around a basic table, a group of tufty children look with indifferent regard into our own prying, rainy afternoon gallery eyes. At what appears to be a funeral, a suited trio mask themselves with worn hats rather than offer their faces for inspection. In a bleak wooden home a mother, cradling her child, stares back with casual defiance into the curious modern world.

Yet there is little evidence of desperation or need. Children play tig with delight, people teach their pets, lovers kiss in a scene of otherworldly innocence. In one uplifting, dreamlike photograph, a child sleeps amid baskets of fresh bread.

One minor disappointment is the absence of explanation. It is one thing to ask the viewer to imagine, guess or conjure an understanding of each photograph; it is another to leave them simply unclear about what is happening. It would surely do no harm to either the photographer’s ego or the de rigueur gallery minimalism to offer some form of basic print-by-print description.

That, however, is quibbling over a curatorial aspect of a most moving and provocative exhibition. Few, if any, media forms can offer the stark impact achieved here. Indeed, it is worthwhile to reflect upon what category this work might fall into. Although the temptation might be to label this as mere "photojournalism", the collective spirit of the overall display is more sympathetic, more human than might be allowed by the demands of a show-me-the-moment press. The considered nature of Towell’s images does much to underline the possibilities available through the photographic to merge the superreal and the spiritual. The combination of the enigmatic Mennonites with the insightful eye of the former poet’s camera has resulted in a powerful, reflective study of life - both that of the subjects and that of the viewer - in a show which highlights the difference between living in poverty and being impoverished.

Until 3 February 2002