Nicola Muirhead

Bermuda

Nicola Muirhead is an award-winning documentary photographer and visual storyteller from the island of Bermuda. Her practice is anchored in investigating how history informs the present and shapes our current reality. Her projects are research-led and collaborative in approach, emphasising engagement with individuals and communities. Nicola draws from experts and testimonials within a community to authentically narrate their stories and truths. With a Masters in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism from the University of Arts London (2017) and a background in International Relations, she freelances in editorial, portrait, and reportage photography, concurrently serving as a visiting lecturer and educator, holding a PGcert in Higher Education (2018).

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• SERIES •

Descendants of Summer

The island of Bermuda, a 21-square-mile archipelago isolated in the mid-Atlantic Ocean, is often seen as a small dot on the map or a picturesque escape - but to me, it is home, memory and inheritance. As a Bermudian documentary photographer, I am drawn to the quiet truths embedded in the island’s landscape, memories carried across generations and the enduring imprint of colonialism on a place that holds history in its very bones. Descendants of Summer is an ongoing documentary that explores the complexities of identity, belonging, and historical reckoning in Bermuda - an island whose present is inseparable from its past. The title references Bermuda's earliest colonial name, the Summer Isles, and evokes both the warmth of home and the haunting legacy of empire. Bermuda became the first British colony to legalise slavery in 1616, a history that continues to shape the island’s social fabric through intergenerational trauma, fractured identities and questions of belonging. This work explores the deeper truths held by descendants whose ancestors were forcibly displaced, tracing the impact of history on contemporary life.

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Monsieur Collodion

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Nora Obergeschwandner