Finding Stillness in the Coastal South

I have carried a camera for most of my life.

I began photographing as a teenager, when photography meant film, patience, and learning to pay attention before pressing the shutter. More than three decades later, the equipment has changed, but the reason I photograph really hasn’t.

Photography makes me slow down.

I am a fine-art landscape photographer based in Southeast Georgia, surrounded by the barrier islands, salt marshes, blackwater rivers, maritime forests, and wetlands that have become the heart of my work.

I am drawn to landscapes that carry evidence of time: a weathered tree standing alone in the water, driftwood slowly being reclaimed by the sea, fog settling over a marsh, Spanish moss above a dark river, or an old structure enduring decades of coastal weather.

These subjects are about more than beautiful scenery. To me, they speak of solitude, resilience, change, and memory.

My goal is not simply to show what a place looked like. I want to communicate what it felt like to stand there.

Much of my current work explores the coast and waterways of Georgia and North Florida. I return to the same places repeatedly because landscapes reveal themselves differently through changing tides, fog, storms, seasons, darkness, and light.

Black-and-white photography has also become an increasingly important part of my work. Removing color allows form, texture, negative space, and atmosphere to take greater importance. It gives me another way to explore the quietness and mystery I often find in these places.

My life outside photography has included service in the U.S. Navy and many years working in emergency services as a firefighter and paramedic. That experience has given me an appreciation for how quickly ordinary moments can disappear. Photography provides a counterpoint: time to observe, wait, and notice.

Today I am building long-term bodies of work centered on the landscapes of the coastal South, including the Georgia coast, Southeast Georgia’s rivers and wetlands, and an evolving black-and-white portfolio.

I want my photographs to feel quiet, atmospheric, and connected to place.

If an image causes someone to stop a little longer than expected and experience some of the stillness I felt while making it, then the photograph has done what I hoped it would do.

Thomas Tanner
Fine Art Photographer of the Coastal South

Land. Water. Time.