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Images which won Australian acclaimed photographer prize

Australian photojournalist Adam Ferguson has been crowned Photographer of the Year in the Sony World Photography Awards 2022 for his collection Migrantes.

The acclaimed photojournalist told nine.com.au the collection was an opportunity to give power to the record number of migrants waiting to cross the US-Mexico border by allowing the subjects to take their own photos.

"I surrendered control of the shutter, the moment of capture, to each migrant to take their own photograph," said Mr Ferguson.

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"I did that because it felt like this process would give people in a very marginalised difficult point in their life, some agency in the in the process of the photography."

"Instead of me going down and pointing a camera at people, I took a medium format camera and I mounted it on a tripod, and I had a long interview with each migrant and a discussion about how they wanted to be photographed or represented," he said.

Mr Ferguson did not want to make photographs that were already being made.

"Everything was this dramatic moment of, you know, a migrant getting arrested by a US border official or a police officer or border patrol officer," he said.

Mr Ferguson ventured into Mexico on the 10 day voyage during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and after the induction of the Biden Administration in 2021.

Upon arriving at his first destination in Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican city on the Rio Grande, the entire city had just gone into a forced lockdown.

"It made it difficult for me to access the migrants because a lot of the migrant shelters put in very strict rules around access.

"They were trying to keep Covid out of their establishments and out of their shelters."

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Mr Ferguson worked along side two Mexican journalists during his time shooting Migrantes, who he said made the project possible.

"Mexico is the most dangerous country on the planet to work in as a local journalist," said Mr Ferguson.

"I worked with two very good journalists in Mexico that really made my job possible, helping me find migrants and translate."

The collaborative project of black and white portraits was first published by the New York Times in June 2021, and will go on display at the Sony World Photography Awards 2022 exhibition at Somerset House in London from April 13 to May 2.

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Mr Ferguson said the upcoming exhibition gives the story a rebirth.

"It gives the story a second life," he said.

"It builds a bigger audience for the migrants story."

Adam Ferguson was born in Dubbo in regional NSW and has lived in New York City for the last five years.

Mr Ferguson is currently working on a new collection based on the Australian bush, a place he says he holds a deep connection to.