Filmmaker Rachel Elizabeth Seed was just 18 months-old when her mother, renowned avant-garde journalist Shelia Turner Seed, unexpectedly passed away. Driven by a desire to understand who her mother was, Seed went on a journey to meet with people whose lives were touched by her mother, including interviews with iconic photographers of the '60s and '70s for Turner Seed's Images of Man series for Scholastic.
This journey turned into the documentary, A Photographic Memory, which uses extensive audio and photographic archives from Seed’s mother. It’s a genre-bending portrait of a daughter’s attempt to piece together a picture of a mother she never got to know, as both the mother and daughter’s worlds merge in unexpected ways.
"I can only speak for myself, but my guess is that for people who lost a parent young, a lot of us have this like unquenchable longing that we live with to know that person or to have that relationship," Seed explains. "And because I was always either a writer, photographer, a filmmaker, one or some combination of those things, that was the way that I felt it was natural to try to come to terms with my loss."
Seed's first iteration of exploring this theme was in 2005, when she traveled around the world to photograph other women and even some children who had lost their mothers young. It took form as a multimedia installation, a photography exhibit and a book.
"I think at the end of that project, the longing I had did not go away, you know, whatever I was seeking. It was comforting, but it wasn't satisfying enough for me," she notes. "And so just a few years later, when I discovered my mother's interviews with photographers and some of her work, I had this sort of crazy idea that it could be a feature film."
Through the process of combing through her mother’s interviews, journals, tapes and articles, Seed found herself reconnecting with her mother through the same mediums she also uses professionally. “So it kind of had this meta element as well,” Seed says. “And so the themes of memory, the themes of why and how we use cameras and photography to preserve people, to try to come to terms with what we’ve lost. Or things that we’re trying to hold on to our own mortality, how ephemeral life is and how we accept that as human beings. You know, [the film explores] all these existential quandaries that we have.”
Seed found her mother's original, unedited interviews from Images of Man at the International Center of Photography in New York, where she spent hours listening to a voice she thought she had forgotten.
"I went into it with some, not hesitation, but like a slight fear that it could be like creepy or haunting or something, you know? Because it just felt like this huge deal to me. And then when I sat down and listened, I actually felt comforted by her voice, and it also was familiar to me," Seed recalls. "So that was just one more layer of like, what is memory that's explored in the film. And it's not just a film about photography, it's a film about all these different mediums and memory and what we're searching for as people and what can help us find it."
Seed says she now feels like she's an expert on her mother's life, but doesn't know what a day-to-day interaction would feel like with her. While exploring her mother's professional work allowed Seed to appreciate who she was outside of being a parent, she was also able to find out how her mother felt about having a child.
“I did get to know her in both ways, which I think I needed to do. If it had just been professional, something would’ve been missing for me,” Seed says. “So I think what I actually got was her as a full person, maybe more so than people do of their parents, but still missing, you know, the day-to-day, which is obviously a very crucial part of that relationship. But I like to think I have a holistic view of who she was.”
Seed's key question centering A Photographic Memory is whether she can truly know herself if she doesn't know her mother. While this obsession had kept Seed in the past while making the film, she feels like it did "release' her.
"It’s not so much that I got to know myself in the process of making the film, but through knowing my mother, I was able to feel like more whole in where I come from. And I think that is part of who we are," she notes. "I think it gave me a great confidence, and it also gave me a great fulfillment in feeling like I have a relationship with my mom now that I didn't have before - which was not a guaranteed outcome of my journey that I went on, but it did actually happen."
“A Photographic Memory” will be showing at the Oriental Theater on Friday Sept. 19 as a part of Milwaukee Film’s Dialogues Documentary Festival. Director and producer Rachel Elizabeth Seed will be in attendance for a filmmaker Q&A after the screening.
Editor's Note: Milwaukee Film is a financial supporter of WUWM.
