Nicola Muirhead
Bermuda
Biography
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).
Nicola is a members of Women Photograph, her work, has been published in the BBC, National Geographic, The Smithsonian Magazine, the Washington Post and was selected for the New York Times Portfolio Review in 2023. She is the recent recipient of the 2025 Women Photograph Project Grant and shortlisted for the The Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture for her ongoing documentary series 'Descendants of Summer'.
Project
“Descendants of Summer” by Nicola Muirhead is an ongoing, long-form documentary photography project that explores the rich and complex heritage of Bermuda, weaving together visual storytelling with cultural memory and identity. Through portraits, archival material, interviews and collaborative media, Muirhead documents the stories and legacies of “memory keepers” — local figures, cultural custodians and community voices whose experiences reveal the intertwined histories that shape life on the island.
Over the course of more than eight years, the work unpacks the narratives that bind place, people and history, preserving oral histories and testimonies while celebrating belonging, continuity and cultural complexity.
