How do we get to know a person we’ve never met—someone no longer alive, yet whose presence still echoes in the lives and stories of those they touched?
In the new Film Independent Spirit Award-winning documentary ‘A Photographic Memory’, filmmaker and photographer Rachel Elizabeth Seed attempts to get to know her trailblazing mother, Sheila Turner Seed – a vibrant and pioneering journalist, photographer and filmmaker, who died suddenly and tragically when Rachel was just 18 months old.
Thirty years after her mother’s death, Rachel discovers her mother’s work — more than 50 hours of interviews with the greatest photographers of the 20th Century, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lisette Model, Gordon Parks, Cecil Beaton, William Albert Allard, and many more. When Rachel threads in the audio reels and presses play, she hears her mother’s voice for the first time since she was a baby.
Sheila, a daring, world-traveling journalist ahead of her time, died suddenly of a brain aneurysm when Rachel was just 18 months old. Moved to uncover more of what she left behind, Rachel sets out to revisit her mom’s subjects, family and friends, revisiting the photographers she interviewed decades before. As new truths emerge, Rachel builds an unlikely relationship with her mother through the audio recordings, photographs and films her mother made during her brief life, crafting an imagined conversation through the cinematic medium.
The film draws from footage of Rachel’s visits to the photographers her mother interviewed, Sheila’s award-winning audio-visual work, Super 8 family films, still photography, audio letters and journals, weaving together personal and photo-historical media to tell a universal story — about facing mortality and loss, the construction of memory and the restoration of a legacy.
Along this path, Rachel questions whether it is possible to get to know someone through the things they leave behind. And audiences now have a chance to watch her journey as screenings are happening across the country.
A Zeitgeist Films release in association with Kino Lorber, ‘A Photographic Memory’ will play at the Culture Vulture Series at Laemmle Theatres throughout the Los Angeles area on June 12 and 14-16, the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago June 20-26 and in New York City at New Plaza Cinema June 27-29 and DOC NYC Selects at IFC Center on June 30. The director herself will be in attendance for Q&As at select screenings, and a national rollout of the film continues throughout the summer.
Ahead of the screenings, we had the chance to ask Rachel about the process of making this film, the importance of sharing untold women’s stories right now, and what she learned about her mother in ‘A Photographic Memory’.
When did you begin working on ‘A Photographic Memory’, and what was the catalyst for making this film?
I started the project in 2011 while working at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York City. The idea came to me one day after I had discovered a large box of my mother’s audio interviews with iconic photographers. When I threaded in the audio reels and pressed play, I heard her voice for the first time since I was a baby. This sense of time travel, and that I might be able to get to know her through all of the work she created as a writer, photographer and filmmaker, inspired me to start the project.
Would you say that this project helped you answer a lot of the unanswered questions you had about who your mother was?
Yes, it definitely did. I really knew very little when I started, and now I feel like a semi-expert on her life. I read all 14 of her journals (that I could find). I poured through 200,000 photographs she took. I listened to 100 hours of her interviews. I don’t know if I had a lot of specific questions about her, but I got a lot of answers by studying all of this.
What did you feel when you first heard your mother’s voice on the audio reels? And did any of those emotions surprise you?
Her voice felt familiar to me, and this was a surprise, because as far as I knew I had no memories of her. It made me question what a memory is, if not something we are consciously aware of!
What did you learn about your mother from the people she interviewed, and the people you spoke with? Did these conversations shed light on new aspects about her?
One thing that I found interesting is that I learned so much about how they saw her, but nothing about how she saw herself. From those I interviewed, I learned that she was charismatic, soft, bold, adventurous, brilliant, a great friend….and so much more.
But from her journals I learned how conflicted she was about her own self image, because she had been discouraged by her family, by society, to dim her own light, question herself as a woman with ambitions, and to question her value as an unconventional woman ahead of her time. She didn’t have many female role models so I think that was quite lonely.
Your mother was ahead of her time in her field. What inspired you about her work and life through the audio reels and by making this film?
I mean, she just went for it! Nowadays girls and women, at least in Western society, are encouraged to follow their passions and reach their potential. She didn’t have that luxury. There were very prescribed paths for women born in the 1930s. They could be wives, mothers, and maybe a secretary, teacher or nurse. That was it! Anyone else was an outlier. I was inspired just by her spirit, her courage, her power.
That fact that she was true to herself and went against the grain at a time when there weren’t many people around her rooting her on for those strengths. I also thought it was great how natural she was when she was interviewing literal photography LEGENDS. I mean, she got them to open up and say things to her they hadn’t shared with anyone else. She was a world-class talent, really one-of-a-kind in any era.
This film was largely a quest for you to get to know your own mother through the things she left behind and to make sense of your loss. What do you hope audiences will take away from your story, and what do you hope they will do with the message?
I could only make the film as true to my personal experience as possible, and hope that people might see some aspect of their own stories in the film. I think any great art has infinite fractals of resonance with as many people who experience it and connect with it. I know that not everyone will resonate with it, but I have received countless emails, messages and comments from people who either lost someone they love, are afraid to lose someone, or from people who want to make a project about their loved one.
I also hear from artists who say they are now inspired to create something new again. What else can I ask for? This is what makes sharing the film so meaningful for me. Sheila’s spirit has also inspired many people, which is wonderful. One of my main goals was to bring her to life again through the film, and to share her life and work with the world.
There’s a very timely message in ‘A Photographic Memory’, relating to the importance of capturing and sharing women’s stories, especially because there are so many that are currently being erased by the Trump administration in various fields. In your own words, what would you say about the importance of preserving and sharing the stories of women even from our own lives and families?
If you go back not that far in time, it’s hard to find women’s stories. A woman’s world (through the patriarchal perspective) was limited to the home and family, not the public sphere. When my mother was working, this was still the norm. She even was diminutive about her own credit or role in the projects she worked on.
For example, the ‘Images of Man’ audiovisual series she produced, was also her original idea. She directed, edited and produced it, and found support for its release with Scholastic and ICP. However, you wouldn’t know any of that based on the final product. She had been raised, as a girl, to not take too much credit, or appear too smart and competent, lest a man be threatened or turned off. She writes about this in her journals. There is a line in the film where she says “I feel an incompatibility between femininity and competence.”
So she always felt this split within herself, because she wanted to embrace her femininity and also be a highly successful, world class writer and photographer. She wasn’t sure how to reconcile these two parts of herself, which to me is frustrating on her behalf. I am sure she wasn’t alone experiencing that, as a woman of her time.
It’s important to tell stories about extraordinary women like Sheila, because they show us that these are and have been women’s experiences since the beginning of time. There have always been dynamic, world-changing, brilliant, creative women, no matter the era. But largely they were not given the spotlight until daily recently, with a few exceptions.
Nowadays women and girls are much freer to reach their potential and share proudly about it, but this is still not true everywhere in the world, and we certainly are seeing regression within our own culture, from those in charge. I think the cat is already out of the bag, though!
How does ‘A Photographic Memory’ play a role in or connect to your 2004-2011 audio visual series about motherless women?
The ‘Motherless Project’ was my first significant attempt to look at my experience growing up without my mom and to figure out how it formed me. I did this by focusing on other women’s stories because that was how I had been working as a photographer for many years – pointing the camera outward was natural for me. It was actually amazing to get to connect with so many others who shared this experience, though everyone was quite different.
The sense of being stuck in some form of grief, and the loneliness coupled with being unusually independent, were common threads amongst the participants. But after that was done I realized I needed to dive more into my own experience, and that I was still longing to know my mom. I got that chance when I began to discover her work.
Once I found the trove of audio reels, her archive kept finding me, all over the world. It was vast and seemingly endless, which was such a gift as her daughter, who also was in the same fields as her, professionally. Because I got to learn about her craft at the same time as getting to know her.
Having created a film that will cement your mother’s legacy for audiences for years to come, in what ways has it make you think of capturing your own legacy and work for future generations?
To be honest, I haven’t really thought about capturing my own legacy. I have decided to burn my journals, though! But the great thing about ‘A Photographic Memory’ for me is that it not only allowed me to become a filmmaker, and to put myself out there in a way that will lead to more work, but it also enabled me to preserve my mom’s great legacy. So it checked a lot of boxes in terms of creative, professional and personal fulfillment.
You can watch ‘A Photographic Memory’ at the Culture Vulture Series at Laemmle Theatres throughout the Los Angeles area on June 12 and 14-16, the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago June 20-26 and in New York City at New Plaza Cinema June 27-29 and DOC NYC Selects at IFC Center on June 30. Stay tuned for more information about a national rollout of the film throughout the summer by clicking HERE.
See more of Rachel’s work on her website.
