My mother, Sheila Turner, was a career woman before that was the thing to be. When her peers were pairing off and getting hitched in the sixties, she was living in New York, pitching stories, traveling the world and shooting pictures as a multimedia journalist. As a working woman, she inspired other young women who dreamed of a life outside of the home—a life of creative fulfillment, spontaneity and self-expression. 

But despite her prolific publications and unconventional, adventurous life, she had a hunger: She wanted to get married and have children. On Thanksgiving in 1969, age 32, she wrote in her journal: “I hate the idea that I’m going to die sometime—especially without real love—and what is the living thing about if one doesn’t make children?”

Three years later she would meet the love of her life, my father, the British Time-Life photographer Brian Seed. They would marry and have two children, my brother, Jonathan, and me. Ten years after that Thanksgiving journal entry, she wrote in a letter to a friend, “I am divinely happy … surrounded by family and friends … What more can I ask from life? (except for Brian to get here and for my kids to sleep through the night).” She was a working mom, spending her days tending to my brother and me while pitching stories, doing interviews and writing.

My mother died a month after writing that note, at age 42, leaving me, 18 months old, my brother, 4, and my father to get along without her. I eventually followed in both my parents’ footsteps and became a writer, photographer and filmmaker—developing skills that have, among other things, helped me to process the monumental experience of losing my mother so young. I’ve discovered that she interviewed some of the greatest photographers of her time, including Henri Cartier Bresson, W. Eugene Smith and Lisette Model, and produced a series of short films about them, in collaboration with International Center of Photography (ICP) founder Cornell Capa and Scholastic Inc. Tracing these films back to ICP’s archives, in 2010 I found a dozen boxes containing a treasure trove of her interviews, personal letters and work papers. I listened to the reels and heard her voice for the first time since she died.

I decided to re-interview the photographers in her series who were still living and document my process of reconnecting with her through our shared professions. This project has become a documentary film, A Photographic Memory. I am getting to know my mother through watching her work, reading her journals and speaking to her friends and family about her. What I have found is miraculous—I can hear her voice, see her move and imagine what she might say or think about anything I’m experiencing in my life. No matter what I have or will find, I’ll miss her terribly and completely. But now I feel connected. Now I know my mom.

Rachel Elizabeth Seed is a photographer and filmmaker in Brooklyn, NY. Learn more about her work-in-progress film, A Photographic Memory, here.