Pale, in Deep Shade: Magnolia Grandiflora

Noted photographer T.W. Meyer here offers up striking images and musings on the Southern Magnolia blossom. Tom lives not far from where he grew up in Decatur, GA, but his work these days reaches a far wider audience -- with good reason. As always with Tom, there is more than meets the eye to his work.

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​By T.W. MEYER

These magnolia flowers represent many things to me, which shifts as my experience of life evolves.

Their temporal beauty is fleeting, often changing in the moments required to make an image.

Within that transience resides a reluctant quality of beauty; lush and sensual, yet achingly impermanent.

There’s a literary Gothic quality to these blooms that seems intrinsically Southern; their romantic, mysterious nature, hidden in the deepening darkness under towering and ancient trees, with yesterday’s fallen underfoot, revealing the inevitable fate of the sensual beauty that glows before you.

An aspect of photography that draws me in is the arresting of a moment into a fixed image. It creates an almost dishonest memory that reveals beauty with accuracy, but ignores any larger truth.

In this is great value for the hopeless romantic.


All images and content in this blog piece copyright T.W. Meyer 2014 (c)
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​See more of T.W. Meyer's work at www.twmeyer.com.
​His book, "Pale, in Deep Shade" is available on Amazon.