A Photographic Memory | Artist Spotlight

Artist Spotlight

Director Rachel Elizabeth Seed expected to attend 

Thirty years after her mother’s death, photographer Rachel Elizabeth Seed 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, Roman Vishniac, Gordon Parks, W. Eugene Smith, and Bruce Davidson. When Seed threads the audio reels and presses play, she hears her mother’s voice for the first time in decades. Sheila Turner-Seed, a daring, world-traveling journalist who—ahead of her time—ventured far beyond the safety of her conservative Jewish family, died suddenly of a brain aneurysm when Rachel was just 18 months old. Moved to uncover more, Seed sets out to revisit her mother’s subjects, family, friends, and the photographers her mother interviewed decades before. As new truths emerge, Seed builds a relationship with the mother she never knew through the audio recordings, photographs, and films she left behind. Among her numerous accolades, Seed was a 2022 Jewish Film Institute fellow.

Recipient of a 2022 JFI Completion Grant

Bay Area Premiere

Rachel Elizabeth Seed, Originally from London, Rachel Elizabeth Seed is a Los Angeles and Brooklyn-based nonfiction storyteller working in film, photography and writing. Her work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Chicken + Egg Pictures, NYFA, Field of Vision, the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, the Maine Media Workshops, the Roy W. Dean grant, the Jewish Film Institute, Jewish Story Partners, and IFP/Gotham Labs, among others. Formerly a photo editor at New York Magazine, her photography has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography and she was a cameraperson on several award-winning feature documentaries including Sacred by Academy-Award winning filmmaker Thomas Lennon. Rachel’s writing has been published by No Film School, the Sundance Institute, and Talkhouse and she is co-founder of the Brooklyn Documentary Club, a thriving film collective with more than 300 members.