A Worthy Kickstarter

Photo by Rachel Elizabeth Seed

This has got to stop! For the second time in just a few days, my systems went down and an entire post got zapped. This time it was my DSL, which went down for just long enough to wreak mischief. Then it's back, all innocent. "Post? What post?" Grrr.

Anyway...I've missed some important Kickstarter projects that I meant to mention. Time goes by and things get away from me. I'm sure people think I sit here like Solomon, sagely judging each project on its merits, making closely considered judgments as to which to promote and which to ignore. Not hardly. Actually, I'm confused and frazzled these days. This persistent feeling of having too many balls in the air is not a pleasant feeling.

Before it's too late: Rachel Seed is chasing the shade of her mother, who made a number of short films with a number of now-iconic photographers back in the early '70s. Well, you can watch the intro video for yourself (it's good; you'll enjoy it). The project is called A Photographic Memory. A $50 contribution gets you a free download of the finished film, after it's finished. I'd like to see it. I hope I remember to remember.

Not the only worthwhile project I've meant to mention.

Mike
(Thanks to Jim Hughes)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

From Rachel Seed: "Dear Mike, I'm glad you enjoyed the trailer and thank you for supporting the project! You should be one of the first to see the films with your pledge. Thanks and all the best, Rachel."

ADDENDUM from Jim Hughes: Rachel Seed's project, "A Photographic Memory," is at its core a search for her mother, whom Rachel never got to know. Sheila Turner-Seed, who would have been my age by now and who was a friend, died suddenly in 1979, when her daughter was 18 months old. Sheila, who had been married to the British photographer Brian Seed for but a few years, was already a respected writer and editor. She was blessed with a keen intelligence and a rare understanding of the photographic impulse.  In conjunction with Cornell Capa's International Fund for Concerned Photography (which led to the establishment of the International Center of Photography in New York) and Scholastic Publishing, Sheila embarked on a pioneering project: to compile an oral and visual history of the world's greatest living photographers who were intent on documenting the human spirit. She interviewed the likes of W. Eugene Smith, Don McCullin, Roman Vishniac, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Brian Lanker, Lisette Model, William Albert Allard and, of course, Cornell Capa, for whom Brian Seed had once worked as an assistant and who had introduced the couple.

The result was "Images of Man," a teaching aid widely used not just in photographic education but across the social studies and humanities spectrum. A Teaching Guide was issued as a softcover book, and each photographer's body of work was turned into either slide sets or filmstrips, and accompanied by synchronized tape cassettes offering vivid descriptions of individual photographs and working methods in the photographer's own voice. The program was a revelation to students. Here is an excerpt of Gene Smith discussing his essay about Maude Callen, the Nurse Midwife, with each sentence accompanied by a new projected image: "This essay...is in many ways the most rewarding experience photography has allowed me. At the time of the essay, she bore near total responsibility for several thousand scattered, swampbound backwoods individuals. They are better off for her care, and I certainly know that I am a better person for her influence. And if that sounds like a love letter...it is.

"...So here, at most, I am giving you twenty-five minutes of a lifetime....my lifetime. Anything that may tickle your curiosity, that challenges you, that you wonder, well, what else is behind that? Well, I hope that you take it from there."

Rachel Seed started to discover her mother's voice when she found some leftover materials from the project in her father's home. It included a letter from Brian Seed indicating he was returning to ICP boxes of tapes, transcripts, notes and journals that Sheila had left behind. Rachel, herself a budding photographer, went to New York, was welcomed into the ICP family, and began digging through the boxes, which had evidently been left untouched for more than 30 years. Thus began the quest to accomplish what essentially amounted to a collaboration between Rachel and her mother to produce a film...about photographic memory.

Comments

[John Krumm]

Okay, Mike, there has to be a way to write your posts so that they are not affected so much by power outages, dsl outages, spilled coffee and whatnot. I remember people making many suggestions in the past. Perhaps your resistance to change is the very thing that allows you to be so consistent with TOP. Still, it has got to be aggravating on your side, and I'm sure there is a solution.

[Dave Jenkins]

I have two copies of Sheila Turner-Seed's book "Fine Trades." If anyone is interested, contact me at djphoto@vol.com.

[John Krill]

Went there and donated - if that's the right word to use?

And you might enjoy this BLISS cartoon: http://www.gocomics.com/bliss/2013/06/10

[Jeff Hohner]

potential fixes? cheap laptop -- it will be immune to power failures; compose off-line in a text editor then cut and paste the finished piece into your blog window -- you will always have a copy of your text independent of the vagaries of the data-cloud. cheers.

[James Liu]

You know that WordPress has robust autosave, and has had it for the better part of the last decade?

[Ken Bennett]

I can't be the first person to suggest that you compose your articles in a word processor, where it is much easier to hit Command-S (Ctrl-S) every few minutes, and then cut and paste them into your blog dashboard, can I? Losing internet won't wipe any data, and even a hard crash will only wipe any changes since the last Save.

[Jim Henry]

How is your Kickstarter plan coming? I've been traveling so maybe I missed something...

[Clayton Jones]

>This has got to stop! For the second time in just a few days, my systems went down and an entire post got zapped.

That surely is one of the most frustrating feelings. How about initially composing your text in a word processor with periodic saves to a local file? When it's done, then copy/paste it into the online interface for uploading.

[Tony Mclean]

Mike—I believe that Typepad has an Autosave facility that may save you next time. Here's a link...

http://help.typepad.com/restore-post.html

Regards

Tony McLean

[Matt Penning]

A suggestion: Edit your text either in a locally hosted program, Word or your favorite word processing program, or use Google Drive documents or some such. Both can have (if you set them up, in the case of local software, automatically set up in the case of Google Drive) automatic saves of your text every few seconds. That protects most of your work from glitches. Then take that text and copy it into your Typepad site when ready. One possible answer to this frustration

[Chris Morse]

You need MarsEdit. It supports TypePad. It allows you to edit locally and then "push" to the server whenever you're ready.

Note, I use it from time to time and I have a little trouble with custom formatting provided by my site's theme but your theme is pretty clean so I don't think you'd have the same troubles.

Disclosure: I have no relationship to this product other than I use it.

[ann]

I felt quite teary watching Rachel's video about her mother. Not having a mother growing up is a loss even if your father is the best in the world. It looks good so far..... . I'm in!

Ann

[John Robinson]

Similar to others, but why not just use GMail to do your editing?

GMail is hyper diligent about saving Drafts.....you don't have to save anything. You might lose a couple of words, but not a whole post.

Then, when the post is edited to your satisfaction, you can copy and paste....I know, that seems like an extra step, and it is, but the value proposition is, the draft will stay in your GMail account until you physically remove it.

No more lost work. Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Tab (to get the destination window), Ctrl-V.

Plus, its cheaper than a laptop....cheaper than cheap.....its free.

[Rachel Seed]

Dave Jenkins,
Fine Trades is actually a photography book by my Aunt, Suzanne Seed. Is that the one you are thinking of?
Best,
Rachel
(Director of A Photographic Memory)

[Richard Tugwell]

Typepad like most blog software has a "save draft" option. Why don't you use that periodically if you need to compose online?

[Michael Tapes]

Hi Mike,

Great KickStarter project. I like you want to see the finished movie. I am in! Thanks for the tip.

[Brian Ellis]

There can be a fine line between making a film that's personal but nevertheless interesting beyond the personal appeal to the creator and one that's more pathos than simply personal. To me this film crosses that line in the wrong way. I'm sure others would disagree.

[Hawkwood]

Sorry to pile on, but it's a rookie mistake. :-)

I tell my online freshman writing students to NEVER write their work in a browser window, because it can go POOF! in a microsecond, without any warning. Write in a word processor, copy and paste into an online window... This also gives you a searchable back-up collection of your posts in case you want to find something you wrote a long time ago.

btw - if you get tired of typing "Yr. Humbl Editor" over and over, get Textexpander, which will let you type "yr" or whatever you choose and then expand it to your intended phrase.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

@ Brian Ellis: Actually, your impression matches mine. This looks like it's a very personal project with some potentially interesting by-products.

But this is not a project I would fund because the end product is fundamentally of a personal and entertainment nature. All of the photographers cited as being interviewed have been thoroughly saturated with scholarly and personal coverage and several are still with us. So what revelations could these interviews offer?

A recent project that comes closest to mind as being kindred was the Eugene Smith Jazz Loft Project which is a traveling exhibition encompassing prints, audio recordings, and a book that presented a broader narrative of Smith and the musicians who jammed at the loft after hours. That was quite an excellent show and model for such between-the-cracks retrospective research.

Nevertheless I wish Rachel well with this project. It looks like she has plenty of professional help.

[Jerry Lazar]

Go Rachel! ... Wishing you all the best for this worthy endeavour... An invaluable contribution to all admirers of 20th-century fine-art photography ... Your mom would be proud... Jerry