Born in England and brought up in Southern Ireland, Greer studied at St Martin's School of Art, London. He then went to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and served four years with the Irish Guards. Greer left the army to pursue a career in photography, first working as a photographic assistant with a number of photographers including Richard Avedon and later as studio manager to Terence Donovan. As a freelance photographer, Greer worked for a variety of magazines and regularly shot covers for The Sunday Times Magazine. He moved to Los Angeles in 1997 and photographed for leading American and international magazines as well as continuing to work on personal projects.

As an officially accredited 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 Leigh Bowery Looks: Photographs 1988-1994 (2001). After ten years in Los Angeles, Greer has recently returned to live in London and has set up his studio in Chelsea.

Greer first exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in 2001 in the display Film Directors: Photographs by Fergus Greer featuring prominent filmmakers from the past sixty years. Subjects included Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, Oliver Stone and Mike Leigh.

Fergus has contributed to a number of group shows and solo exhibitions, including:

2025 Leigh Bowery!, Tate Modern, London

2024 Paris Photo 2024, Grand Palais, Paris

2024 Outlaws: Fashion Renegades of 80s London, Fashion and Textile Museum, London

2023 Centre d’Art Contemporain, Genève - Chrysalis: The Butterfly Dream

2022 Tell Them I Have Gone to Papua New Guinea, Fitzrovia Chapel, London

2019 Fergus Greer:Leigh Bowery, Looks, Michael Hoppen Gallery, London

2019 Less is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design, ICA, Boston

2019 Gossamer, Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate

2019 Airpad 2019, Pier 94, New York

2017 The Unflinching Gaze, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales

2014 Real and Surreal, Staley Wise Gallery, New York

2012 No fashion, please!, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna

2012 About Leigh Bowery, Camera 16 Contemporary Art, Milan

2012 Model Behaviour, ICA, London

2011 The Actress Now, National Portrait Gallery, London

2010 Leigh Bowery and Other Butterflies, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin

2009 Gay Icons, National Portrait Gallery, London

2008 Leigh Bowery, Gallerie Albrecht , Munich - Kunstverein Hannover

2007 Fergus Greer, Guernsey Arts, Guernsey

2007 Leigh Bowery, Domus Artium, Salamanca

2006 Photographer In Focus, Fergus Greer, National Portrait Gallery, London

2006 Into Me/Out of Me, KW, Berlin

2006 Fergus Greer and Leigh Bowery, NRW, Dusseldorf

2006 The Secret Public, Kunstverein, Munich

2006 Taboo, British School at Rome, Rome

2005 Leigh Bowery, 51st Venice Biennale (Curated by Rosa Martinez), Venice

2005 Leigh Bowery-Useless Man, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York

2003 Take a Bowery, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

2002 Fergus Greer/Leigh Bowery, ICA, London

2001 Film Directors: Photographs by Fergus Greer, National Portrait Gallery, London

1999 Look at Me, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne

1998 Addressing the Century: 100 years of Art and Fashion, The Hayward Gallery, London

1997 Print Circle, The Photographers' Gallery, London

1997 In Memorandum to Leigh Bowery, Fine Art Society, London

1995 Avedon My God, The Photographers' Gallery, London

1994 A Postive View, Saatchi Gallery, London

1993 Heartbeat of Fasion, Haus der Fotographie, F C Gundlach, Hamburg