Lorey Sebastian: Legendary Film Photographer Finds Truchas, Part 1

My good friend, Lorey Sebastian, who lives here in Truchas, has been a still photographer in the film industry for several decades and has photographed just about every actor imaginable. She is an intensely private person in a very public business. However, she agreed to talk to me about how she started in film, why she did, and how she feels about her work now.

She’s willing to share parts of her story but without pictures of her or photographs from her film portfolio. I did get to shoot the interior of her wonderful, old adobe home, though, and I’ll post those here.

In going through the recording of our conversation, I realized there was no point in taking her story and putting it in my words. She tells it so well. So, while I can’t say this is precisely quoted in its entirety (although much of it is), I can say it’s a very faithful paraphrase.

I offer here, Lorey Sebastian in her own words:

I was a conceptual artist using photography as my medium in New York City back in the 80s. At that time, there were many, many conceptual artists using photography, and I wasn’t one of the lucky ones. By complete happenstance, a makeup artist friend of mine was doing a film in New York and had read the script. She told me there was a series of conceptual art pieces in this film (a project that will go unmentioned) and that it was something I could probably do blindfolded. She made an appointment for me with the director, and I gave her such a low figure that she had to hire me.

The lead actor was playing the part of a conceptual artist who shoots photos of himself for his art. My job was to create the pieces that would hang as his art in his gallery at his art opening in the film. I had a loft in SoHo then, and I took him up there and created a huge art installation—massive photos of this guy demolishing a chair and things like that. In the movie, he had his camera on a tripod, and that’s how he photographed himself. The irony is that we spent days doing this, I made next to nothing, and it all ended up on the cutting-room floor. The whole scene—not just my art, but a massive scene with hundreds of extras coming to a gallery opening—was completely cut.

Years later, a producer friend was making the film Stolen Hearts, originally titled The Cemetery Club. (I wish I could tell you the stories because, really, this particular story is priceless, but I just can’t.) I used to visit him on the set just as an observer; I wasn’t working in film yet. They were shooting in Brooklyn, all around Coney Island, and at the Brighton Beach Club where these seventy- and eighty-year-old New Yorkers would go in the summer to sit by the pool in lounge chairs with their dyed hair. It was quite extraordinary, really. The two main actors, Olympia Dukakis and Danny Aiello, were both older and have since passed away. Contractually, there had to be a full-time registered nurse on the set at all times because of the age of the leads. The nurse was Jamaican, and her name was Beryl. She was such a warm addition for the cast and crew.

One day during a Coney Island shoot, I walked down the street during a lunch break. It had been raining all morning and was very chilly. I settled into a dumpy little coffee shop, where Beryl joined me later. I was having a nice, hot cup of tea, and she asked if she could read the leaves. I thought, I might not want to hear this—what if she’s a witch? Anyway, she read my leaves, and the two things I remember vividly were that she told me I would never have children of my own and that my life’s partner would come much, much later in my life. At the time, I was maybe 35. As it turned out, I have no children, and I didn’t find my partner until I came to New Mexico many years later.

From that experience on that film—from watching the still photographer work and talking to various people—I decided that was something I wanted to do. I went to the union offices and found out what was needed to get in. At the time, there was only one woman doing still photography in the union. I almost had to sue to get in, and they knew that I would, so they gave me a heavy-duty test. I had to use different kinds of cameras—4x5s, 8x10s, 35mm—to produce a portfolio. I got into the union, which was a huge deal, but it cost a fortune. It was probably five thousand dollars, if I remember correctly. Who knows what it is now, but the perk was that my very first paycheck for one week’s work, even with taxes taken out, was almost six thousand dollars. I remember thinking, What have I been doing all this time struggling when there was real money to be made?

It’s a very difficult job: long hours, and you have to meet the demands of a lot of people—studios, producers, directors, and actors. You have to be present and yet remain invisible. They don’t want to know you’re there taking photographs, but they absolutely need your photographs to promote the movie. They need your work for posters and billboards. Your work can make a movie—or not make a movie.

And you’re with these people twelve hours a day. You either become a family, or you don’t. I spent four months up in British Columbia, in Vancouver mixed in with Alaska, and we really did become a family. It was an extraordinary experience. I don’t think I’ve ever had one quite like it on a film. We lived in Quonset huts and we all had chores: cleaning, laundry, changing the linens. We became very close. When we parted, we all cried.

Those are the beautiful things about this business: you get to travel, and you meet people you’d otherwise never get to meet—or probably even want to meet—and yet relationships develop.

My job, especially, has a lot to do with the actors—how they perceive me, how I perceive them, and how we form a relationship (or don’t). You always, always have to be on your toes. You can never thrust yourself into someone’s face. If it doesn’t happen, it just doesn’t happen, so you do what you can. And then magic happens. There are times with actors that are sheer magic. I wish I could give you names, but there are truly magical actors out there.

To be continued tomorrow. Lorey moves to Hollywood…

(Note: Much of the art in these photos, collected over the years, is by local artists right here in Truchas.)

Love to you all,

Jeane

Originally published March 31, 2011