We follow him back to a small village in rural France, apparently devoid of life, where he struggles to write, smokes too much weed, and comes to terms with his isolation and insomnia. What is he running from and why did he turn up in the small village in the middle of nowhere unannounced? Deadfall continues Ferguson’s experimental approach to making pictures, writing text and publishing books. The line between truth, ction, memoir, fantasy is not always clear.

‘He smoked two for every one of mine, although I tried to keep up, and he must have been fifty years older. Today he asks me slowly if I’m leaving again soon. I say nothing and light a cigarette. Can I finish smoking this without answering? It’s not an easy question I say, which is met with more silence. We both know I’m avoiding the reason I arrived unannounced in the night so long ago.’ – Deadfall

Abandoned swimming pools, wintery forests and deserted houses become the landscape for Ferguson’s fragmented writing. Memories are lost within the present and short phrases are given as much signicance on the page as photographs. The photographs too are fractured and sometimes in the pictures and words we see things recur.

Max Ferguson is a photographer, writer and curator from London. He is the Founder of Oval Press, the Founding Editor of Splash & Grab Magazine, the Photo Editor of Granta Magazine. Alongside his friend, and collaborator Cian Oba Smith, Max co-authored ‘The Portrait Photographer’s Manual, which was published by Thames & Hudson in 2023. He is a Senior Lecturer on the BA Photography course at the London College of Communication and a regular visiting lecturer on various photography programmes across the UK. Previous experience includes ve years as the Director of Photography of Port Magazine and several years as a regular freelance Photo Editor at the Financial Times Weekend Magazine. Max recently completed his MA in Photography at UWE in Bristol. His debut book of photographs Whistling for Owls has now sold out.