Lightstream represents Nigel
Grierson's most recent foray into photographic abstraction as he makes
long exposures of figures beside the light of the ocean. Taking the
maxim from Dieter Appelt "A snapshot steals life that it cannot return. A
long exposure (creates) a form that never existed", Grierson makes
beautiful images, which on the surface might appear to owe as much to
the medium of painting as they do to photography. However, it is
important to him that these are un-manipulated images straight from the
camera: "From the outset, my work has been largely about 'photographic
seeing' as I'm fascinated by what Garry Winogrand so simply described as
'how something looks when photographed'. Hence, a sense of discovery
within the work itself is very important to me; finding something new
that I didn't already know. There's a huge element of 'chance, and the
embrace of the happy accident within this approach, which is a sort of
photographic equivalent of action painting. I'm often more interested in
what something suggests rather than what it actually is, each image
becoming a starting point for our imagination as it edges towards
abstraction".


Yet what is unique about photography is that it
always keeps something of the original subject. So there's a dynamic
duality, a dramatic to and fro in the viewer's mind, between what it is
and what it suggests. The marks and traces created by the moving light,
at times have a simplicity like a child's drawings. On occasion, the
residue of a human figure might be reduced to little more than their
posture or demeanor, which then seems more significant than ever, a sort
of essence, whether that be elusive or illusive.