I met Michael Sebastian in Santa Fe, at Review Santa Fe in 2010. His series, 52 miles, documents his commute form his home to his office. His vision of an east coast suburban landscape is anonymous, free of human portraiture, yet filled with specific ideas of human connection through architecture, space and contained environments.

In 2011, Michael was part of David Bram’s curated vision of “A Moment of Being” our New Directions exhibition. Focused on portraiture, Moment of Being gave Michael a chance to showcase his depth in finding a connection to his surroundings.

K, West Virginia, June 2010

Michael Sebastian was born in New Orleans, and grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Dallas, Texas. He starting making and developing photographs around age eight  using the Kodak Brownie of renowned my-first-camera cliché. Once its brittle Bakelite finally yielded to his ham-fisted ministrations, Michael graduated to a well-used Zeiss Ikon Contina with a broken light meter, which further disappointed him by failing to bounce resiliently from concrete.

Undismayed, Michael wound up graduating from medical school and two residencies, photographing all the while—with greater or lesser frequency—around life’s other obligations. Along the way, he married a Kentuckian and moved to Louisville to raise two children. When not shooting, he practices anesthesiology in central Kentucky, in roughly that order of precedence. Fortunately for both cameras and patients, he now drops things far less frequently.