Filmmaker Rachel Elizabeth Seed turns the camera on herself in her personal genre-bending film A Photographic Memory, documenting her attempt to get to know her mother, Sheila Turner Seed. Sheila Turner Seed, a vibrant and pioneering journalist, photographer and filmmaker, died suddenly and tragically when Rachel was just 18 months old.
Winner of the Truer Than Fiction Award at the 2025 Film Independent Spirit Awards and a New York Times Critic’s Pick, A Photographic Memory will have a limited theatrical release via Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber at the Culture Vulture Series at Laemmle Theatres throughout the Los Angeles area June 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. Rachel Elizabeth Seed will be in attendance for Q&As at select screenings moderated by special guests to be announced. A national rollout of the film continues throughout the summer.
Thirty years after her mother’s death, photographer Rachel Elizabeth Seed discovers her mother Sheila Turner Seed’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, Brian Lanker, Cornell Capa, Bruce Davidson and Eliot Porter. 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.
“In my photography and creative work, I am driven by the desire for connection. Perhaps this is because my mother died when I was a baby; I’m always seeking to reconcile this loss in my life. It’s this drive that inspired me to make A Photographic Memory,” said Rachel Elizabeth Seed. “From 2004-2011, I created an audio-visual series about motherless women, interviewing and photographing 40 women and girls around the world, but it wasn’t until I turned the camera on my life for this film that I began to make sense of my own loss. I hope for the result to be cathartic for myself and for those who relate to losing someone close to them, or being estranged from a parent. At the same time, I aim to memorialize my mother’s legacy as a woman ahead of her time who made a significant contribution to the fields of journalism and photo history.”
Watch the official trailer for A Photographic Memory.