Guest Speaker: Max Ferguson

When presenting to us, Ferguson shared his experiences as an editor and embarking on his MA where he explores the relationship between photography and memory. During the lockdowns this past year, Ferguson has made use of all the extra time by investing it into his own personal practice for his MA. Listening to Max talk, it was clear that he very much believes that the more work you produce, the more informed you become and therefore, so does your work and ideas. He heavily focuses on the production of material, as evidenced by his love of sketchbooks and enjoying the materiality of something physical. 

Ferguson is a full time photo editor and has worked with many print magazines such as Splash and Grab, Ten Ten and Port magazine. 

It seems as though the theme that he is exploring in his own work, where he explores the link between photographs and. memories, is prevalent in some of the publications that he is working on. This seems to really inspire and inform his own work as he is constantly surrounded buy this theme that is part of his own practice. 

I was very lucky to be able to have Max for a one to one portfolio review where he reviewed my project Sabr. He gave me lots of feedback which was very useful. He told me it was a strong body of work, and that the issue I was exploring was an important one and he would love to see it when it is completed. It surprised me that he had so much knowledge about Islam, he was much more informed on the culture than I expected, although he said he had a great time listening to me and my stories about the nuances of my project and my faith. He told me he learnt a lot from me. I was very happy with the session, I got lots of good feedback from him and some pointers on where to take it in the future. He mentioned how much doing an MA had taught him and recommend I do something similar if I ever got there chance. 

Find Max’s work here.