Pastor Simon Dixon poses for a portrait in Haast Bluff, also known as Ikuntji, an Aboriginal community in Australia’s Northern Territory.
The Australian Outback as you've never seen it before
Photographs by Adam Ferguson
Story by Lilit Marcus, CNN
Published September 28, 2024
Pastor Simon Dixon poses for a portrait in Haast Bluff, also known as Ikuntji, an Aboriginal community in Australia’s Northern Territory.
Adam Ferguson had plans for what his photography series was going to be.
But the subject matter had other ideas.
Ferguson, a photographer who has returned to his native Australia after years living abroad, wanted to document the Australian Outback in an unsentimental way. But during the decade he spent working on the project, climate change, the pandemic and other narratives changed its trajectory.
The end result is “Big Sky,” a monograph published by Gost Books in 2024.
“I actually set out to make a book of portraits,” says Ferguson, who has taken portraits of American soldiers, migrants at the US border, Afghan women and others over the course of his career as a documentary photographer. “But I realized quickly that the landscape and the earth was such an intrinsic part of the story that I had to photograph more than just people.”
Readers shouldn’t expect the usual golden hour postcard shots of Uluru in the pages of “Big Sky.“
“It wasn't my intention to make pretty pictures of cowboys and sunsets and dust. We all know what that looks like. And we've all seen the glossy touristic pictures, which idealize a place. I wanted to make something that felt more like a cultural critique.”
Ferguson grew up in the remote New South Wales town of Dubbo, attended art school in Brisbane, and spent years living in New York City. It was the time spent working and living outside of Australia that inspired him to revisit his homeland as both an expatriate and a repatriate.
“I think Anglo settler identity defines politics largely in Australia. And I think the perception of the bush or the Outback is very much ingrained with colonization and pastoralism, the noble farmer out there kind of waging war against the elements to kind of provide us with our resources,” he says.
“From the city, the gaze to the interior of the country is very much one steeped in nostalgia. And I think it's a much more complex country than that. I think Australians gloss over the trauma that exists environmentally and culturally.” He adds: “I don't think I could have made this work without living abroad for so long.”
Australian governmental data shows that rural communities are at higher risk of poverty, alcoholism, obesity and other issues. Part of this is access: more and more businesses have closed, forcing people to travel longer distances in order to go to doctor’s appointments, get government services or visit a lawyer.
Ferguson’s work makes that trauma visible. Photographs show land ravaged by years of drought and the detritus that people leave behind when they give up on rural life.
One of the book’s most compelling pictures shows a group of chairs hanging off a tree, tied by wires. The unusual scene, like so many others in "Big Sky,” was the result of weather: the chairs were placed there in order to keep them from washing away during a flood. But behind the photograph, there’s a deeper meaning: the owner of the farm had recently died by suicide, leaving his widow to manage what was left.
Sadly, this farmer’s story is not an isolated one.
Rural men have the highest rate of suicide in Australia. The social work professor Margaret Alston of Monash University says that “climate variability together with lower socio-economic conditions and reduced farm production” are leading more and more White rural men to think that death is the only way out.
“I tried to find a metaphor in every scene,” Ferguson says. “I didn't set out to comment on climate change. But we entered a period of long drought when I started the project a decade ago, so the majority of the period that I worked on this project was drought time. So [it] very quickly and inadvertently became a project about climate change.”
But “Big Sky” is not only a chronicle of hopelessness or rural despair. The bush is complex, both a place and an idea.
It is also a source of joy.
Ferguson was adamant that he wanted Indigenous Australians to be portrait subjects for the book. However, the local customs and rules regarding non-Indigenous people visiting Indigenous sites and celebrations made it a challenge.
In one incident, Ferguson drove to the remote Western Australia town of Warburton, where a circumcision ceremony was taking place for young men in the Pitjantjatjara (Anangu) community. He hung around in town, hoping someone would give him permission to take a portrait, but one by one each said no.
As he was about to leave, feeling defeated, an elder Indigenous woman asked if he’d be willing to give her and a few relatives a lift back to their town in the Northern Territory.
He said yes.
After a 600-kilometer (373-mile) trip through the Australian desert, the woman, Daisy, invited Ferguson to see and take photographs of her Country.
Country is a big word for Indigenous Australians. It doesn’t mean “nation” — it is a broader term that can encompass landscape, mountains, water, language, identity, community and so much more.
After 10 years, two homes, and a global pandemic, “Big Sky” is Adam Ferguson’s way of introducing the world to his Country.
“Big Sky,” published by Gost Books, is now available.
