Theatre of Space – serie

Photographs taken during Grierson's wanderings in Mexico and Guatemala in the late Eighties, and Nineties. While continuing his preoccupations, from where he'd left off several years earlier (his RCA work), Grierson was now met with a different reality, and a fresh challenge. Would the post modernist, formalist playfullness, in his earlier work, continue within this new third world environment? We are always ultimately shaped by our environment, but within the work, the environment is also shaped by both the photographer's own subjectivity and the medium itself. 'Grierson indeed is a particular kind of witness and his work is as much about the medium as the world', (Gerry Badger). Putting away his flash gun (which had characterised much of his earlier work), in respect for the indigenous people, he wanders through Central America, recording his interactions on b/w film. The resulting emotive images, have a strong sence of humanity, but they are never sentimental, and their power still owes much to Grierson's formalist eye, and the subtle, yet visceral connections between the objects and people, within each frame.