Patti Smith: Dream of Life

In the '70s, Patti Smith was part of a fledging New York punk scene that leaned as hard on the artsy side of music-making as the visceral and noisy. Smith was a rock critic before she took to the stage, and her 1975 debut album, Horses, was her most sublime piece of rock criticism, as energetic and self-aware as a work from French cinema's New Wave (a movement itself advanced by critics). Smith quoted Van Morrison and Wilson Pickett while getting under the skin of their songs, explicating the deeper meanings without losing the sexual thrust. Photographer Steven Sebring is a longtime friend of Smith's, and he spent 10 years piecing together Patti Smith: Dream Of Life, a fans-only document of rock's premier poet.