LONDON, ENGLAND.- The National Portrait Gallery presents Fergus Greer – Photographer in Focus, on view through September 10. Portraits of David Bowie, Julie Christie, Damien Hirst, Bill Gates, Ray Winstone and Michael Caine are some of the highlights in a new installation of photographs. This display celebrates the acquisition of an important archive of fifty portraits, spanning the last fifteen years, taken by leading international photographer Fergus Greer.

Fergus Greer was born in England and brought up in Southern Ireland. He studied at St Martin's School of Art, London and then graduated from The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. After this he was commissioned into the Irish Guards and served four years of military service. Greer then left the army to pursue a career in photography, firstly working as a photographic assistant with a number of photographers including Richard Avedon. Subsequently he became a full-time assistant and studio manager to Terence Donovan. For the next six years he was a freelance photographer, working for a variety of magazines and regularly shooting covers for the Sunday Times magazine. His style is characterised by a strong graphic approach to his subjects.

In 1997, Greer moved to Los Angeles working for leading American and International magazines as well as continuing to work on personal projects. As an officially credited war artist he documented the war in Kosovo, and a book of these photographs, was published in June 2001. He also collaborated with the Australian performance artist Leigh Bowery to produce a book of photographs, Leigh Bowery Looks: Photographs 1988-1994 (Violette Editions, 2001) with accompanying exhibitions at London's ICA and in various venues in New York and Europe.

Fergus Greer has participated in numerous international group exhibitions including A Positive View at the Saatchi Gallery, Avedon My God at The Photographers Gallery, In Memorandum to Leigh Bowery at The Fine Art Society and Art And Fashion of the last 100 years at The Hayward Gallery. Greer first exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in 2001 in the display, Film Directors: Photographs by Fergus Greer which included twenty-five of his photographs of film-makers. In 2005 Fergus Greer was selected to exhibit twenty photographs at the Venice Biennale.

After ten years in Los Angeles, Greer has recently returned to live in London. This display features twenty-four portraits of actors, musicians, literary figures and artists. It includes a recent photograph of Robbie Williams and another of Newspaper Editor Sarah Sands, which was shot to coincide with the opening of this display.