Elizabeth Siegfried is a fine art photographer and a platinum printer. More importantly, she’s a storyteller. Her self-portraits and landscapes reveal a first-person narrative as seen through the eye of her camera. It’s a moody, meditative, proudly personal vision. Surprisingly, her latest artistic direction celebrates the artistic vision of another. Someone she had never met. Her grandmother, Elizabeth Chapin White. The project began with a serendipitous discovery at her summer home in Canada.

“I found an old box in the corner of the cabin,” Siegfried says. “At first glance, it looked like it was filled with old dishes, squirrel nests and other debris. But I was curious, so I took out all the junk and looked inside. I found all these wonderful canisters of 16 millimeter film that my grandmother had shot on early Kodak movie cameras.”

Some films were in black and white, a few were in color. Her grandmother had labeled each film canister with her name and address. Many also had lists of the locations, days of shooting and the people featured. “My grandmother was very well organized,” she says.

Siegfried approached these films with caution. They’d been in that box for more than half a century, and she had no idea of what shape they were in. She didn’t risk running them through a projector. Instead, Siegfried had the films transferred to digital media and uploaded them to her computer. Then she took a look — and her curiosity was finally rewarded.

She saw black-and-white glimpses of Sarasota in the 1920s and ’30s. Lost structures like the Bay Island Hotel and the Gulf View Inn. Scenes of beaches and beachgoers in uncomfortable bathing suits. Backlot vignettes of the Ringling Brothers Circus’ winter quarters. The records of her grandmother’s winter visits with a Sarasota friend.

“I was amazed,” she says. “I had absolutely no idea that my grandmother had a Sarasota connection.”

The films from the early 1940s had an even stronger circus connection — and many were in living color. Her grandmother had shot these on family trips to the Ringling Brothers Circus in Rochester, New York. Siegfried’s eyes filled with wonder as she watched. Scenes of elephants, not only performing, but also setting up tent poles. Workers hammering in tent stakes. Clowns clowning around for the crowd — or enjoying private moments. Equestrians in precarious human arabesques riding bareback. A man on stilts calmly reading a book.

Her box of memories had opened up a chapter of circus history. Siegfried explored that history with her friends, Pedro Reis and Dolly Jacobs of Circus Sarasota. They introduced her to Jackie LeClaire, the famous retired circus clown. She showed him the circus films — the sight electrified him with joy. “Jackie was so excited when he actually found his father in a crowd,” remembers Siegfried. “‘That’s my Papa!’ he said. He was able to tell me the names of many of the people in the films and the stories behind them.”

Fascinating stuff. But Siegfried’s fascination went beyond historical documentation.

The films were good. Surprisingly good.

Give the average person a movie camera. Send them to a circus and they’ll come back with a typical home movie. But her grandmother’s films were anything but typical. Elizabeth Chapin White had a masterful sense of composition and an intuitive eye for fleeting moments. She was interested, not only in the acts in the center ring, but the subculture outside the big top.

Her grandmother had an artist’s eye. Siegfried recognized it instantly. It takes one to know one.

“If the films were ho-hum I would’ve let them alone,” she says. “But I knew they were something special. I wanted to share them with the world.”

Siegfried gave the films a second look. And many more after that.

Over the next four years, she painstakingly went through the films frame by frame. Looking for perfect moments. Still images culled from moving tableaux. Images that could stand on their own. It helped that her grandmother lived right down the street from Eastman Kodak, and had instant access on the cutting-edge photographic equipment of her time.

Siegfried’s tools were cutting-edge, too. Digital imaging software like Photoshop and iMovie gave her amazing power. But Siegfried cleaned up the still-frame images but didn’t manipulate them. A good artist knows when to stop.

“I love the physicality of the films,” she says. “That wonderfully saturated look of Kodak color. I wanted to keep the feeling of film, and left the black hedges of the frames.”

More than that, Siegfried wanted to bring out her grandmother’s vision, not impose her own. Her project amounted to a cross-generational artistic collaboration. She began that project with respect. And came away with more.

“I never met my grandmother,” she says. “But I feel like I really know her. We’re kindred spirits. She was a strong woman with an original artistic eye. I like to think she’s passed some of that on.”