Two decades ago, photojournalist Cathy Lander-Goldberg was volunteering at Edgewood Children’s Center. When she taught darkroom skills, the girls stood next to her in the dark and poured their hearts out.
Shaped by those confidences, Lander-Goldberg started photographing young women, ages 15 through early twenties, who’d overcome some sort of hardship, rough treatment, stacked odds. The resulting exhibit, Resilient Souls: Young Women’s Portraits and Words, was shown in St. Louis in 1996, then went on tour, garnering a good bit of media attention.
Your guide to a healthier, happier you
Sign up for the St. Louis Wellness newsletter and get practical tips for a balanced, healthy life in St. Louis.
Lander-Goldberg later traded her photography career for a master’s in social work, and she now uses photography and writing as expressive therapies, making it easier for people to open up to her and to understand themselves. Last year, she published Photo Explorations: A Girl’s Guide to Self-Discovery Through Photography, Writing, and Drawing. It’s a creative workbook that encourages girls to draw pictures of their truest self, record memories, name their inner strength, write a letter to their body, write a letter to their future self…
Meanwhile, Lander-Goldberg was on the hunt for the young women she’d photographed 20 years earlier. They’d scattered around the country. Some she found through Facebook, some through their mothers’ land lines. Two, tragically, were dead. The young woman who’d struggled with domestic violence had struggled a bit more, but now she was living alone—well, with a really cute puppy—in a sweet frame house she’d just purchased. The tough gang member was now a tough football player, as loyal to her teammates as she’d been to her “girls.”
“They had given me the honor of helping to tell their stories publicly in the 1990s—pre-social media, when sharing personal stories was not so common,” Lander-Goldberg says. “So every reunion was special—like I’d found a long-lost friend. For those whose lives were going well, I cheered, and for those who have continued to struggle, I admired their ability to push on.” Having faced challenges early, they’d “gained the confidence that they have the power and resilience to get through difficult times.”
Lander-Goldberg’s new exhibit, a 20-year follow-up to Resilient Souls informed by two decades of experience (her own and her subjects’) opens November 17 at the Morton J. May Foundation Gallery at Maryville University. The Resilient Souls Project opening will be from 5 until 8 p.m. November 17, with a brief presentation at 6:30 p.m. The exhibition runs through December 16, 2016.
