Merideth Grierson

b.1947
Merideth Grierson was born in 1947 at Scott Field, Illinois, and had a nomadic Air Force childhood. She attended high school in Minneapolis and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1969 with a B.A. in Humanities. She is a self-taught photographer.

Her interest in photography began at age 3, studying numerous family photograph albums and wondering what caused image distortions on the back of spoons. After a couple of childhood Kodak Brownies, she started using a camera with f-stops in 1969, photographing Vietnam War protests and People's Park that year.

She has lived in San Francisco since 1971. Her work has appeared in over two dozen publications and has involved editorial muckraking, book illustration, performing arts, and promotion for musicians, authors and theaters. Her music photography has been published in BAM magazine, Guitar Player, The Mix, Musicians' Industry, Musician magazine, The Punk Globe, and Slash. Although totally devoted to black and white photography, she agreed in 1980 to do a color project with writer Erik S. McMahon, chronicling the disappearing neon art of San Francisco. Some of this work was featured in an article in The San Francisco Chronicle magazine.

Among the 20 galleries which have exhibited her work are the Berkeley Historical Society, the Eye Gallery, the Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, the San Francisco Art Institute, the San Francisco Women Artists Gallery, the Scott Nichols Gallery, and the Michael Shapiro Gallery. In addition, Zyzzyva has published her personal work 4 times.

Her photographs of People's Park and City Lights Bookstore are in the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.