When I first moved to Louisiana, I was struck by the appearance of oil refineries at night, which looked like strange forbidden cities. Soon after I started to photograph them, I was stopped by the police and told that refineries are indeed “unphotographable” according to post-9/11 regulations. This experience heightened my interest in them as photographic subjects. Keeping a low profile, I began to systematically document refineries up and down the Mississippi River, using a handmade afterimaging camera to render them as ghostly, mysterious constellations of light marked by unearthly color shifts. For me, these images evoke both a presence and an absence. They are points along a continuum between strict representation and subjective abstraction, or between our immediate visual reality and the decaying, remembered imagery that subconsciously shapes our perception. Afterimages have a transgressive quality that appeals to me. They appear when we use our eyes in ways that we shouldn’t – by staring at something too bright or holding our gaze for too long. The photographic series “Slow Light” addresses the phenomenon of afterimages – the latent imagery that remains on our retinas after we look at the sun or at bright objects in the dark. In this process, I am able to simulate an essentially unphotographable visual experience by using handmade artificial retinas that register the remains of light.