When I was very little, my father used to sail us out to remote islands off of North Carolina to picnic and collect treasures. These treasures would range from fresh scallops and beautiful shells to entire rabbit skeletons, sitting undisturbed as though ready to hop away. But my favorite treasures to find washed ashore were the old bottles. Often blue glass, and usually covered in barnacles, they spoke of exotic adventures out of the past, someone trapped somewhere; a message in a bottle. For some reason the vision of girls adrift at sea in bottles has been stuck in my head for the past two years. I finally decided I had to let them out of my head and onto paper. They seem like a dream to me: some resting, some daydreaming, some slightly troubled or even annoyed at their circumstances. They are the message in the bottle, the treasure and the trapped, mysterious person all in one. I have always loved the play in water, sometimes turbulent, sometimes looking like beautiful waves washing in from the Caribbean, and have incorporated that in my photos, letting the luminous mystery of the deep blue seas star equally. Although the photos seem to be from oceans worldwide, I call them my Mississippi Mermaids: besides loving the movie, they were all photographed here in New Orleans—and what other mermaid would travel in a bottle?

—Sean Yseult