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Photographing in South Sudan for Oxfam, by John Ferguson

1 March 2019

In 2012 working with Oxfam and in conjunction with the Daily Mirror newspaper and the Independent Magazine I returned to Southern Sudan. This was my second trip to the country, one year on from my first visit to cover the celebrations of the world's newest country South Sudan and it’s Liberation from Northern Sudan.

The country was still embroiled in a renewed civil war with the North and a myriad of other problems, one which included a major refugee crisis in the Blue Nile region of upper delta state near the border with Northern Sudan, where this image was taken.

Oxfam’s team in South Sudan was providing clean water, public health and sanitation in and around camps of refugees and internally displaced people.

While wondering around the Jamam refugee camp, I came across 12 year old Amir Nassar who was selling food snacks nearby from his little makeshift store. I only just noticed him out of the corner of my eye, whilst I was taking other pictures. It was his oversized jacket that caught my attention, I approached Amir who was happy to pose for my pictures and talk to my translator. This image ended up on the cover of the Independent Magazine and also featured on a nationwide poster campaign for Oxfam.

John Ferguson is an award winning and well established commercial and advertising lifestyle and portrait photographer based in Ipswich, East Anglia & London. His career started in and around London's famous 'Fleet Street' working for national newspapers and magazines such as The Times, The Daily Telegraph and as a senior staff photographer for The Daily Mirror. He has been commissioned by various well-known magazines from Cosmopolitan and Der Spiegel to the Australian to name but a few. Having spent many years travelling the world on assignments, his photographic responsibilities have ranged from covering conflicts all over the middle east and Afghanistan to natural disasters such as the tsunami in Asia, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, to documenting poverty and social issues nationally and internationally with many international leading NGOs.

John has also spent time working in various photo studios around the world, photographing celebrities such as Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Naomi Campbell, the Osbournes, Beyonce and many others. His unique and creative artistic visual approach as seen his work exhibited many times. In 2007 his first solo show entitled Black Britannia was opened by the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown at London’s City Hall, before going on a nationwide tour.

Producing contemporary, inventive and emotive photography, and allowing businesses and organisations to communicate and transfer their core message and ethos, either through new website imagery or promotional and marketing campaigns, John’s images expose his clients' motivations and principles to a much wider and savvier 21st-century audience and clientele.

See more work by John Ferguson

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