BOBBY MOZUMDER - What prompted you to do this exhibit? Were you reflecting on your back catalogue?

STEVEN SEBRING - Yes I was actually, I had these pieces done before the year 2000. I was actually experimenting with digital. It was before everybody was doing digital, I was still shooting a lot of film and polaroid still. It was really great because with digital you can scan your original polaroid and then you can produce it. It was really for me something really cool. But then I always wanted to manipulate it and abstract the digital as well, so I just started tiling these things, to look at it from a whole another direction. And then, the gallery Milk, I do a lot of photoshooting there, they have a gallery, and they've been wanting me to do some things, and so I just sort of pulled up this installation.

BM - So it's been a long term project?

SS - Yah, it's been in the can for a long, long time. I have about four different exhibitions in the can, and it's really funny, I just do these things. I have one installation that's been in the storage facility for almost 10 years, it's costing me a fortune. I do these things, and I spend all this money, and I design all these large easels out of metal, and I just store it away until it feels like the right thing, and this was that sort of thing. What's interesting is when you see it large now, it feels more "now" than it feels back then, because digital has taken over, so I made it more about the process. You can see the original polaroids of Jim Carroll and everybody, and you can see how I took the polaroid and made it a 60"x50" piece.

BM - These are digital prints now?

SS - Yes, they call them archival pigment prints. I kept them digital prints because they look amazing, they almost look like paintings. I kept it that way because the whole process was that, so I followed through. It's almost like when you start a film, on movie film, and then you put it on video, you finish the project on video, and felt like I wanted to see it through.

BM - The whole project sounds epic.

SS - It's really fun to see. And i put all kinds of different things into it. I put all these other elements, I call it the elements of illumination.

BM - Your subject, are they your favorites? Are they the closest people you work with? I know with Patti Smith, you did a documentary Dream of Life with her, but are you close with the others?

SS - Patti is my closest friend and she's family. Michael Stipe is a very dear friend of mine. Philip Glass I have an acquaintance with because he was in the movie Dream of Life. Joey Ramone, the image that I did of him was one of the last images that he did. He died maybe 3 months after the photograph. I knew he was one person that I could have been close to because he communicated a lot with me after the photoshoot.

BM - How many shoots did you do with him? That one near his end?

SS - Yes, just that one. Richard Hell was for GQ. These were all years ago. Philip Glass was for L'Uomo Vogue in Italy. Patti was for a trip for her Gung Ho album cover, and there's another portrait that I did of just her and I hanging out. Neal Young was for the cover of Spin back in 1995 before I even met Patti. Jim Carroll, I think it was for.. I'm not sure what magazine it was for, it was just so long ago. He was such an interesting guy.

I just started going through the images, it was years ago when I first started putting it together. I just felt they were true poets, these people, and they just happen to all be musicians and performs, they weren't actors. I was staying away from actors because I felt they were a different breed. I was thinking about putting Jeff Bridges in it because he's a musician, but I didn't feel he was in the realm of these cats, because these guys were true, true poets.

It's interesting because Patti and I were talking about this because she's was seeing the images, she ended up seeing the installation because she's performing tonight at the installation. It's definitely an exhibit that will grow I feel, and she even believes it too, saying that I should go after Eminem, or go after Bowie or do a Lou Reed photograph.

BM - Thank you.