The ‘Witness’ aspect of Grierson’s work, like that of Klein and many other photographers who work in the straight photography mode, refers to the simple fact that he is taking his imagery from life. And yet it is vitally important to note that he is transforming it. This is art, not pure description. Grierson indeed is a particular kind of witness and his work is as much about the medium as the world. The photographer transforms the world just as much as the painter, a fact that needs to be reiterated again and again, because it is so often misunderstood…… Grierson himself says he employs the straight photographic aesthetic because it proves so often that ‘truth is stranger than fiction’, and it exposes the particular paradoxical nature of photography, that it is reality and fiction at one and the same time - and is the surrealistic medium par excellence, the ideal arena, or at least as good as a dissecting table, in which to combine Lautréamont's chance meeting of a sewing-machine and an umbrella.

                                                                                                                                   Gerry Badger