Larry Towell was born in Ontario in 1953 into a large rural family. After studying visual arts at York University in Toronto from 1972 to 1976, followed by a stint of volunteer work in India, he lived in solitude on a homemade river raft for two years in order to write. While teaching folk music at night school through the 1980s, he began travelling to Central America to document war crimes, which resulted in two oral histories and a book of poems. Larry joined Magnum Photos in 1988 to become a freelance photographer and writer. His first photo book was the result of ten years of reportage on the war in El Salvador, followed by two books on the Palestinians and a book on the Old Colony Mennonites of Mexico, who had come to Canada as migrant farm workers.

The World from My Front Porch, a project on his own family and his philosophy on land and landlessness, was published in 2008, followed by Afghanistan (2014) and The History War (2023), based on a decade of coverage on the conflict in Ukraine. Larry is also a gifted songwriter and musician, author of several music/poetry CDs, and a triple vinyl LP of original ballads entitled The Man I Left Behind (2023), as well as the feature-length film of the same name. He served on the Magnum board of directors for over a decade, as well as vice president of the New York Magnum office.

Photography awards include: the World Press Picture of the Year, the Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, a Eugene Smith Award, the Leica Oscar Barnack Award, University of Missouri Pictures of the Year, an Alicia Patterson Award, the French Prix Nadar, and the British Design and Art Direction Award. In 2020, he became a Guggenheim fellow. Larry still lives in rural Ontario, where he sharecrops a 75-acre farm.