Kathryn Ferguson

I wanted to be in the sea and in the water.

And what I found in the water was this incredible community of humans who were the polar opposites of the xenophobia and

I guess, just general racism that was happening on dry land.

The sea provided this gorgeous soup, this friendly soup.

And as I was swimming and finding my own feet in this new town, I just met all of these beautiful people who felt the same as I did.

And I wanted to make a film about them.

That came pretty fast.

I think within a matter of weeks of moving, I thought, I need to document this.

This is magic.

And that's where Taking the Waters came from.

Well, I studied fashion originally.

I went to Central Saint Martins and I did the fashion communication and promotion course many moons ago, but it was actually there that I got extremely into film.

I wasn't studying it.

I didn't know how to do it, but I was very inspired by what Nick Knight was doing at Show Studio and this idea of merging the fashion image with motion.

And it was really from that point on, way back in 2005,

that I started to experiment with film and I worked in, I'd say, fashion film for a good five to ten years, potentially.

I worked with lots of brands and designers making shows for online and for opening catwalks, etc.

But what I found quite quickly, I guess, within this world of working in fashion was the passivity of the models that I was shooting and the stories or the lack of stories, maybe.

that I was trying to share with my moving image-based work.

And it was through that process, well, maybe it was only a couple of years actually, post-graduation, that I decided I was going to go back and do a master's and I really wanted to focus more on film.