#nrianlanker

U.S.A. -

Rachel Seed is a Brooklyn-based photographer and filmmaker who divides her time between multimedia documentary projects and freelance photography assignments. In her latest work, A Photographic Memory, she sets out on a journey to learn more about her mother whom she never knew but so desperately needs to know. She is the daughter of New York and London-based writer, editor and producer, Sheila Turner, who passed away while Rachel was only 18 months old. She revisits her mother’s half-finished 1970’s landmark project Images of Man - a series of interviews with legendary photographers – and combines it with her own footage, to create a posthumous mother-daughter collaboration. In this conversation, she takes us through her journey of making this unusual film.

  Some years ago you discovered tapes containing interviews with legendary photographers that your mother had been working on. How did the idea for a film fall in place for you and why did you decide to take a personal approach to the film?

At first my idea was simply to have my mother’s series, Images of Man, digitized and re-released for current media. But as I began to discover how much of herself she put into the programs, and how much of a story was around the work, I got the idea to broaden the project and make it more personal. As a journalist/photojournalist I was much more comfortable behind the camera, so it has been a real stretch for me to be in front of it.

  “Images of Man” envelope when it came out.