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, Gordon Parks, Cornell Capa, Cecil Beaton, and Bruce Davidson. 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 Turner Seed, a daring, globetrotting 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 revisits her mom’s subjects, family, and friends, tracking down the photographers Sheila interviewed decades before. In the process, Rachel builds an unlikely relationship with her mother, and in turn, herself, through the audio recordings, photographs, journals, and films her mother made, crafting an imagined mother-daughter conversation that transcends time and space. 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 photohistorical archives to tell a universal story — about facing loss, the meaning of memory and the restoration of a lost legacy.
