I spent over a decade as a working photojournalist until I abruptly stopped. What called me away from that life were two grave illnesses in my family in as many years. I did not pick up a camera again for a good while after that. Then, early one spring night, I saw some delicate daffodil petals lit only by streetlight. The nighttime illumination seemed to reveal the vulnerability and fragility of the ordinarily stalwart daytime daffodil, just as critical illnesses had revealed the vulnerability of those closest to me. For the better part of that year, I photographed nothing but flowers at night, surrogates for my stricken and lost loved ones. Later, as the scope of my pictures enlarged, the metaphor moved from individuals to the way the larger world feels when a cherished family member is dying. When someone has outlived most of his or her contemporaries, the dying experience is shared with only the remaining few who really know them well. The isolation feels total. The dying person is slowly leaving this world, and if he or she is very old, the world — the world he/she knew in more vital years — was gone long ago. For everyone involved, there is a sort of vertigo, as no one reality feels like the right one. I take photographs in the middle of the night because that is the time that most closely resembles that experience of temporal dislocation.