Fergus Greer

Fergus James MacGregor Greer (born 8 May 1961) is a British-Irish internationally renowned photographer and psychotherapist, known for his strong visual and emotional resonance in his large body of work. He served as an officer in the Irish Guards before leaving to pursue a successful career in photography and, later, in psychotherapy. His work has been featured in numerous publications and exhibitions and held in many public and private collections, including 87 works at the National Portrait Gallery, London and 5 works at the Tate Gallery, London.

Early life and education

Greer was born on 8 May 1961, in Aldershot, Hampshire. His family moved to Ireland in 1970 but returned to the UK in 1976. After leaving school, he went on to study at St Martin's School of Art, London. He then attended Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, passing out in 1983.

Career

The Irish Guards

After graduating from Sandhurst, and following in the footsteps of a number family members who had served in Irish Regiments, Greer was commissioned as an officer into the Irish Guards. He served for four years. In 1988 he met the performance artist and designer Leigh Bowery, One of Greer's images of Bowery was listed in The Guardian in 2023 as one of the 40 most outrageous photographs to have changed fashion. During this time Greer was also developing his freelance photographic career with commercial and private commissions and with a variety of magazines. He regularly shot covers for The Sunday Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Fortune, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker.

Greer relocated to Los Angeles in 1997 to expand his international reputation and career as a portrait photographer. His list of sitters encompasses royalty, artists, actors, musicians, writers, politicians, businesspeople, academics, and athletes. His work has been recognised with two solo exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2001 and 2006. The gallery holds many of Greer's portraits, including:

In 1999, Greer was appointed as the official war artist for the Kosovo campaign and was embedded with his old regiment, the Irish Guards. He published his work in 2001 in the book Kosovo,

In December 2006, when Greer came back to live in the UK, he was commissioned by Clarence House to return to Sandhurst to photograph Prince William and Prince Harry. The informal double portrait was taken in the Commandant's House and was supposed to be used at the Concert for Diana in 2007; however, it was never published. The photograph was seen publicly for the first time in 2011 at an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Vanity Fair suggested that this portrait was the start of "a new dress-code option: royal casual."

The interest in the "most remarkable portfolio of work" Greer's photos of Bowery have featured in numerous exhibitions over the years. In 2019 the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London hosted the exhibition "Fergus Greer, Leigh Bowery, Looks". One review of the exhibition says, "Half a century later, London feels more grey and colorless than ever. We'll never see Bowery again in the flesh: his true medium. But Greer's vital document lives on: a blueprint for a new generation of club kids and freaks tracing their evolution." The online art magazine Dazed Digital said, "Greer photographed Bowery in what have become some of the most richly classic and culturally important portraits of the artist to date. The permanent relevance of Greer's images is found in the way they have culturally preserved the icon."

Greer's photographs are extensively used in the major retrospective exhibition "Leigh Bowery!" at the Tate Modern, which opened in February 2025. The Independent comments that the photographs are "brilliant". The National Portrait Gallery owns 17 of these photographs, including:

Psychotherapy

As a continuation of his interest in the human condition and his search for the "truth" while making photographic portraits, Greer trained as an adult psychotherapist at The Westminster Pastoral Foundation between 2010 and 2015. Since 2012 he has worked as a psychotherapist for the NHS, firstly in Hackney and then at Guys Hospital, London.

In 2015, Greer co-founded The Courtyard Garden Clinic and The Ebury Practice in London, from where he practices privately.

Exhibitions

Over the years Greer has contributed photographs to many exhibitions around the world, including:- 1993 Heartbeat of Fashion, Haus der Fotographie, F C Gundlach, Hamburg 1995 Avedon My God, The Photographers' Gallery, London 1998 Addressing the Century: 100 years of Art and Fashion, The Hayward Gallery, London 1999 Look at Me, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne 2001 Film Directors: Photographs by Fergus Greer, National Portrait Gallery, London 2002 Fergus Greer/Leigh Bowery, ICA, London 2003 Take a Bowery, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 2005 Leigh Bowery-Useless Man, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York 2005 Leigh Bowery, 51st Venice Biennale (Curated by Rosa Martinez), Venice 2006 Taboo, British School at Rome, Rome 2006 The Secret Public, Kunstverein, Munich 2006 Fergus Greer and Leigh Bowery, NRW, Düsseldorf 2006 Photographer In Focus, Fergus Greer, National Portrait Gallery, London 2008 Leigh Bowery, Gallerie Albrecht, Munich – Kunstverein Hannover 2010 Leigh Bowery and Other Butterflies, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin – Koster Fine Art Gallery, Amsterdam – Loftgalerie, Berlin – Heiner Bastian Gallery, Berlin 2011 The Actress Now, National Portrait Gallery, London 2012 Model Behaviour, ICA, London 2012 About Leigh Bowery, Camera 16 Contemporary Art, Milan 2014 Real and Surreal, Staley Wise Gallery, New York 2019 Airpad 2019, Pier 94, New York 2019 Gossamer, Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate 2019 Less is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design, ICA, Boston 2019 Fergus Greer:Leigh Bowery, Looks, Michael Hoppen Gallery, London 2023 Centre d'Art Contemporain, Genève – Chrysalis: The Butterfly Dream 2025 Leigh Bowery!, Tate Modern, London 2026 Suspects: Van Gogh, Tricksters & Co, Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles 2026 Cocktail Prolongé: F.C. Gundlac Special, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg

Books

Greer is the author of several books, including:

Kosovo: The Balkans War, 2001 Leigh Bowery Looks, 2002