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Finding Eden

Fergus Carmichael

Profile picture of Fergus Carmichael

Fergus Carmichael uses photography as his visual language, a means of translating thought, emotion, and experience into something both seen and felt. His practice explores the fluid relationship between self and environment, with a focus on themes of identity, queer ecologies, landscape, the queer male nude and the spaces they occupy. He is drawn to the quiet intersections where personal histories and physical places converge, revealing how their surroundings shape who they are and how they exist in the world. By capturing his own life’s passage through self-portraiture within places that hold personal significance, landscapes tied to key moments of his growth from boyhood to manhood, he explores the dialogue between mortality and permanence. Each image becomes a meditation on belonging, transformation, and the spaces that anchor our sense of identity. We all pass through this world, yet the landscapes we traverse outlive us. Taking influence from the pictorialist movement of photography, His work with self-portraiture, landscape and domestic settings as well as the queer male nude, uses a multitude of techniques, digital, cyanotype, projection, and photo montage to create with a unique sense of physicality, tangibility and beauty.  His photography seeks to evoke introspection and empathy, inviting viewers to consider their own relationship with time, place, and self. It is an ongoing exploration of what it means to move through the world; to witness, to change, and to leave traces within the landscapes that endure.

Fergus Carmichael uses photography as his visual language, a means of translating thought, emotio...

Fergus Carmichael uses photography as his visual language, a means of translating thought, emotion, and experience into something both seen and felt. His practice explores the fluid relationship between self and environment, with a focus on themes of identity, queer ecologies, landscape, the queer male nude and the spaces they occupy. He is drawn to the quiet intersections where personal histories and physical places converge, revealing how their surroundings shape who they are and how they exist in the world. By capturing his own life’s passage through self-portraiture within places that hold personal significance, landscapes tied to key moments of his growth from boyhood to manhood, he explores the dialogue between mortality and permanence. Each image becomes a meditation on belonging, transformation, and the spaces that anchor our sense of identity. We all pass through this world, yet the landscapes we traverse outlive us. Taking influence from the pictorialist movement of photography, His work with self-portraiture, landscape and domestic settings as well as the queer male nude, uses a multitude of techniques, digital, cyanotype, projection, and photo montage to create with a unique sense of physicality, tangibility and beauty.  His photography seeks to evoke introspection and empathy, inviting viewers to consider their own relationship with time, place, and self. It is an ongoing exploration of what it means to move through the world; to witness, to change, and to leave traces within the landscapes that endure.

Final work

A series of cyanotype prints on A3wooden panels.Together, the panels form a composition show a faint, ghost-like figure moving through soft, landscape

Finding Eden

Finding Eden highlights the hidden tensions between queer identity and anxiety and the fragile reality of the Environment. This body of work draws on ideas from queer ecology, often employing the self-portrait, particularly the male nude, to explore vulnerability in both overlapping spheres. Historically, the male body has been idealised as strong.  Fergus's work shows it differently, soft, exposed, unsettled and transient; becoming both subject and object, where personal, political, and environmental concerns collide. These landscapes aren’t just backdrops but collaborations, shaping how he moves and how the image evokes a broader sense of loss and urgency.

Finding Eden, Artist Book 1

Each of these unique artist books showcases original cyanotype prints drawn from my series, Finding Eden. Both books are for sale.

Finding Eden, artist book 2.

Book number 2 from the body of work, Finding Eden. Both artist books are made from unique cyanotypes, making them completely one-of-a-kind art pieces and fully unique.

Japanese Paper Prints on Kozo 70gsm Process

As part of the exploration and process for this work, I made a series of prints on Kozo 70gsm Japanese paper. These are taken from a major edit of the wider body of work, drawing on imagery from Menorca and Ireland. Using landscapes from areas of personal significance and self-portraiture within the landscape.

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Finding Eden

Fergus Carmichael uses photography as his visual language, a means of translating thought, emotion, and experience into something both seen and felt. His practice explores the fluid relationship between self and environment, with a focus on themes of identity, queer ecologies,...

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