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“I Became Obsessed with the Idea that All Great Art Contains the Life Force of the Artist…”: Director Rachel Elizabeth Seed on A Photographic Memory
A Photographic Memory Filmmaker Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s photographer mother Sheila Turner Seed died when she was just 18 months old, before specific memories could take hold — an absence that structures doc producer-turned-director Seed’s True/False, Hot Docs and DOC NYC-playing A Photographic Memory, which I caught at the Woodstock Film Festival. From the outset, the documentary is an archive-based biographical detective movie of sorts, following Seed over the years in which she learns about her mother by reconstructing the biography of her professional life. This work includes not only her own photography but a 1970s interview series, Images of Man, she produced with Cornell Capa of the International Center of Photography. In the series, the elder Seed talks to some of the century’s great photographers — Henri Cartier-Bresson, W. Eugene Smith, Lisette Model, Don McCullin and Bruce Davidson, among others — and their responses to her questions featured in A Photographic Memory illuminate not only the art form at that moment in time but also the state of photography as a field for a single woman artist and journalist.
But the journey depicted in A Photographic Memory is also a very personal one for Seed as she analyzes her mom’s relationships leading up to her decision to give birth. With her own point-of-view present through first-person narration, Seed continually considers her own life in parallel as well as in counterpoint to her mother’s. It’s a lovely film, one energized by Seed’s heartfelt epistemic desire, a search for which she’s found inventive and quite moving visual and editorial strategies that truly make it a dialogue across decades.
A Photographic Memory is currently playing through November 28 at New York’s DCTV Firehouse Cinema.
Filmmaker: A Photographic Memory is a story about your mother but also very much a story about you and your own personal and professional journey. How was the project originally conceived? Was this intertwining always part of the project, and did your own personal journey become more present as you discovered parallels with your mother’s life?
Seed: The catalyst for the film was the moment when I heard my mother’s voice for the first time since I was a baby, via her interviews with various iconic 20th-century photographers. My goal when I started was to know her better and to see if I could build a relationship with her through the work she created and left behind. I soon realized, though, that people watching the film needed me to be the guide to knowing her, through my own experience of discovery along the way. At first, this was very uncomfortable to me; putting my own story in the film was not something I felt drawn to do. But, ultimately, I realized that was what the film needed to have the effect I wanted it to have. So I gradually embraced that approach. When my partner Christopher Stoudt began editing with me in 2022, he was instrumental in helping to bring that element to the forefront of the story.
Filmmaker: As a follow-up, you found striking formal ways to capture visually this cross-generational dialogue, including, most memorably, the final shot. How were you thinking as you went along about making you and your mom “talk” to each other using shot composition and editing?
Seed: These approaches were all inspired by real, otherworldly experiences I was having as I got to know my mom over the years. At a certain point, after listening to dozens of hours of her interviewing photographers, studying thousands of her photographs, speaking to many people who knew her, and reading her journals, she began speaking to me. If I was struggling with an issue I would quiet my mind and ask for her advice. Then, she would answer me.
Additionally, from the beginning the challenge I assigned quietly to the project was, how close could I get to her, and how much could I know her, through the work she left behind? I had gone to a Lewis Hines (famous for making affecting portraits of child laborers in the early 20th century) photography exhibit while I was making A Photographic Memory, and standing in front of one of his pictures I understood in a flash that it was not just the children I was seeing but Hines himself. I got, at a deep level, how a great photograph allows us to see the photographer. A great novel contains the essence of the writer. I became obsessed with the idea that all great art contains the life force of the artist, no matter how long after they have died. So I wanted to see if I could somehow bring her back to life, and build a relationship with her, by immersing myself in her work. Once I went through the experience of doing this in my life, I then had to figure out how to translate that into a cinematic experience in the film. That is where the idea of creating a conversation via her audio and my responses and bringing us into the same room came from.
Filmmaker: I was struck by the sit-down you had with one of your mother’s former partners, who muses on his own life and “what could have been.” Tell me about the decision to include that scene, and what were some of the decisions you had to make about including or excising other tangential storylines, themes and characters?
Seed: Each scene and character had to drive the narrative and core storylines of the film. Many, many characters and storylines did not make it! I wanted to include Gabriel because he was with her and witness to her at the prime of her career, which the film is centered on, but also because he represents to the audience how she made choices to stay true to herself, even when they were heart-wrenching and sometimes hurt other people. He represented what her parents wanted for her, and on paper, he was a wonderful match. But she knew within herself he was not the right one. So even as she approached her mid-30s, single and with no children (one of the great fears she writes about in her journals, which was not in the film, was of being an “old maid,” perhaps the worst sin a woman could commit at the time), she did not stay with him. Women are raised to please others, so the fact that she made these hard decisions throughout her life that were lonely yet true to herself shows her inner resolve to find what was meant for her.
I get emotional almost every time I see that scene!
Filmmaker: As a related question, what were some of the gems from your mother’s interviews with celebrated photographers that you were unable to include in the film, and do you have further plans to do more with your mother’s archive?
Seed: There are endless gems! I frequently play Henri Cartier-Bresson’s voice, from their interview, in my head, as he shares his philosophies on living life and editing photos. One of my favorite lines was about editing one’s pictures: “There are no maybes. All the maybes should go to the trash.” In another, he talks about how people take too many pictures and implies that this is gluttonous. He encourages photographers to be thoughtful and intentional about what they shoot. I would love to do more with Sheila’s work, and ideas include a podcast, book, and exhibit. Once I have a moment to breathe after this film’s release, I will explore those ideas. She was prolific and left material enough for several lifetimes. And her work is evergreen, maybe even more relevant today than ever — a world-class, visionary thinker, writer, and artist.
Filmmaker: What parallels and divergences did you come to appreciate between your mother’s career and your own given the different eras in which you are practicing image-making?
Seed: One thing that struck me, after knowing very little about her until I was already established in my career, was how similar our career trajectories and interests were. We both started in writing, then became obsessed with photography, and finally became filmmakers. We both interviewed and photographed people, incorporating audio and stills into our work (before making films). I always turned to writing as a young child, as did she, and started out working at newspapers, magazines and publishing companies. We both were travelers, not giving a second thought to the life of frequent travel. By the time I immersed myself in her work, I was already in my 30s, so her work did not influence me much professionally because we were already so similar. But it’s striking how parallel our paths were. One way our work was a little different is that mine was maybe a little more conceptual, and hers, a bit more photojournalistic in terms of photography. But both of our work always focuses on human stories of people, relationships and cultures.
Filmmaker: The participation of ICP has been valuable to the film. Could you speak about your relationship to the organization throughout the filmmaking process?
Seed: The founder of ICP, Cornell Capa, introduced my parents to each other in the 1970s. My father was his assistant at TIME LIFE London and was a father figure to him, and my mother took Capa’s photo class in NYC. He was family to us, and maybe that explains a lot about the close connection I feel to the institution. My mother’s photographer interviews lived in their archives for decades before I showed up in 2010 and digitized them all. I feel very close to Cornell, and his vision for ICP. It feels like a home to me. It was there that I listened to my mother’s voice via her interviews, and there that I came up with the idea for the movie.
Filmmaker: Finally, at a time in which true crime and big-name celebrity docs are dominating production slates, could you tell us something about the financing and production path of your film — how you went about production and financing, built support for the film, and ultimately realized it from a production point of view. Who were the important financial supporters and at what stages did they come in?
Seed: Oh, gosh, that’s an hour-long chat! In this circumstance, the length of time it took me to make the film (more than a decade) helped me build support for it. I was not a filmmaker when I started the project, did not go to film school and did not have a network in this field. But I had received grants as a photographer, and was used to writing proposals, so I just transferred those skills into the film realm. Still, so much of fundraising is in relationship building. People need to trust and believe in your vision and ability to execute it. Our first supporter was Dick Robinson, CEO of Scholastic, and my mother’s former boss (who passed away in 2021). I then did a Kickstarter and began writing grants. Ultimately I think we received more than 10 grants from institutions like Sundance, Jerome Foundation, NYFA, Jewish Film Institute, Jewish Story Partners, Roy W. Dean and Chicken + Egg Pictures. Beyond that, we brought on investors later on after pitching at the Sundance Talent Forum, and have executive producers who gave grants to the film. Believe it or not, we still need funds to finish, so the fundraising continues!
All I can say is fundraising is a meaty and challenging part of filmmaking, and it doesn’t seem to get easier the longer you’re at it. The industry continues to change and with it, filmmakers must pivot to new avenues of financing.
Editor’s Note: This article’s introduction was adapted from our DOC NYC curtain raiser.
