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‘A Photographic Memory’ Review: A Filmmaker Traces Her Late Mother’s Vibrant Life in Ingenious Meta Doc

Using a myriad of archival materials and inventive narrative devices, Rachel Elizabeth Seed searches for Sheila Turner Seed in 'A Photographic Memory.'

Turner’s most notable work, “Images of Man,” a series of programs for Scholastic where she interviewed the world’s most renowned photographers during the ’60s and ’70s, serves as Seed’s most essential treasure trove to witness her mother in her element. Of those artists, it’s Henri Cartier-Bresson who becomes a recurrent voice in “A Photographic Memory,” as he engages with how the images that we capture attempt to preserve the futility of existence, to fend off the fear of disappearing into the void of obscurity. In crafting these atemporal exchanges and tracing Turner’s vibrant life, Seed realizes that the making of this documentary brings closure to her mother’s work and symbolizes the departure point for her own.

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