Adam Ferguson
Oceania
Renowned for his photographic work during the war in Afghanistan, Adam Ferguson travels the world documenting key geopolitical phenomena and social issues, highlighting the effects of globalisation and climate change, particularly on rural populations. His featured series Big Sky, emerges as a photographic meditation on Australia’s climate crisis, blending childhood recollections with contemporary observations on Aboriginal ties to the land, diminishing towns, and evolving pastoral and mining landscapes. Winner of numerous prestigious awards, Adam Ferguson was also named Photographer of the Year 2022 by the World Photography Organization for a series of collaborative portraits he made with migrants on the US-Mexico border.
© Adam Ferguson, Lake Huffer, Big Sky
Australia is experiencing some of the extreme impacts of the climate crisis, from bush fires to floods that are having a deep societal impacts. Adam Ferguson’s long term project “Silent Wind, Roaring Sky” explores the complex realities of contemporary life in the Australian Outback that charts the impact of the environment on often remote communities. Through this project he explores the rituals of rural life, shrinking small-towns, Aboriginal connection to Country, pastoralism, the impacts of globalisation and the adversity of climate change. In doing so, he questions the Australian identity in the context of the complex realities of contemporary life.
About the series
“My mum was born in Yeoval, a farming village in regional Australia, also known as the childhood home of Banjo Paterson, the famous Australian poet who romanticized life in the Australian bush. Every Christmas until my grandfather died, our family would hold a slide night where photographs displayed my grandmother, grand-father, and their five daughters dressed in white English pomp for a country show or the horse races, as well as images of my great-grandparents on their wheat and sheep farm. These family memories became my own impressions of the Australian bush and of European settler identity. My family history epitomizes a rich social fabric that once enmeshed the Australian Outback and its iconic bush towns. Pastoralism has been an integral part of its history, transforming the region’s environment, culture, workforce, and driving the national economy. However, the realities of the bush are complex and layered. The country’s occupation and colonial legacy have resulted in the deep dispossession of first-nation traditional custodians from their lands, language and culture, and desecration of earth, and landscape.
In recent years the centralisation of business, globalization, a transition to large-scale mining, the mechanization of farming, and a population shift to larger regional centers have reshaped the environmental and cultural landscape. The country has also suffered from extreme weather linked to climate change – bushfires, flooding, and drought. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by the end of the century, drought will become more common and severe across the planet’s mid-latitudes and the subtropics. Australia’s changing landscape is a harbinger of things to come. Big Sky is a photographic response to Australia’s climate crisis. Drawing on childhood memories and traveling documentation, I observe fading yet iconic events, shrinking small towns, Aboriginal connection to Country, pastoralism, and mining. By presenting a vivid account of Australia in the Anthropocene, I attempt to challenge and position archetypal tropes of the Australian landscape with the complex realities of contemporary life in the Outback.” – Adam Ferguson
Master of Fine Arts (Research Candidate), Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology School of Art, Australia B.A (2004), Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Australia
Photographer of the Year 2022 – World Photography Organization, with a series of collaborative portraits made with migrants on the US-Mexico border
World Press Photo 2020, Portrait Stories, 1st Prize
Recipient of awards from New York’s Columbia University, Pictures of the Year International, American Photography, Photo District News, The Overseas Press Club of America, the Moran Arts Foundation and the National Portrait Gallery of Australia
Exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria – Australia, the Annenberg Space for Photography – Los Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts – Houston, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art – Beijing, and the Cortona on the Move International Photography Festival – Italy, among others
He is currently working on two monographs – a reframing of his photojournalistic work from Afghanistan and a long-form photo essay examining the changing cultural and environmental landscape of Australia’s vast interior.
