Guest Lecture: Max Ferguson

Max is a photographer, writer and curator. He is the Founding Editor of Splash & Grab Magazine, the Director of Photography of Port Magazine and Port Creative and a freelance Photo Editor at the Financial Times Weekend Magazine. In the very beginning, he photographed people in London tube, exploring the possibilities of photography. Realised that he wanted to be a photographer documenting stuff in future. After that, he started to work for magazine and rethinking cooperating with people. He started to produce his own magazine, he producing works date-to-date, learning sessions from mistakes. Splash and Grab is his own publication bring photography from global, from different platform. Looking for photographers who are doing long term project. Thinking about images and texts how visual language to provide general information.

There is always not too late to think what you want to be. As I see myself as a book artist in the future, but I still work in multiple tasks in both photography and communication design. It’s hard to sit in one position because I like to explore different things. Through learning new things, I get a better sense of who am I. I think when you know who you are and what you want to do, you would find the direction. So, question yourself like Max does, it helps you to clear the way so that you would know what to do next. Similar when I do testing on my book, putting images on plain paper, folding, sequencing, this repetitive and practical process allows me to think what is the possibility to show my work in a book format. Most of time we work independently, however, relying on people isn’t a bad thing but do rely on people you trust. Thus, keep building your networking as you may use it at some point. I think learning from mistake is good thing and next time you would know how to avoid it or make the mistake smaller, if you don’t face the mistake you would lose the valuable experience. Another benefit of learning mistake is that you would easily remember it, because the experience attaches on you so that you won't forget about it.