Photographer Erica Berger is the longtime best sister-friend of TSP’s Margaret Roach. We asked her to share the images she did for People magazine in 2001 of a sisterhood formed by loss, that of the 9/11 widows, to mark the eighth anniversary. Let Erica tell the story, and let her slides speak for themselves.
By Erica Berger
WHEN I WAS ASSIGNED THE PROJECT by People magazine, I was reminded of what my mother asked me years ago when I worked at The Miami Herald: “Why do they always give you the religion and dying stories?”
To be clear, I have worked with four Pulitzer prize-winning photographers who certainly didn’t win them with Pet of the Week photos. But I do feel some sisterhood with loss and the people who are sideswiped by tragedy. I lost my best friend, Wendy, to hydroencephalitis at the age of 7. My father died when I was 21; a beloved boyfriend in a plane crash at 22. And those were only the early years.
I panic at wakes, shiva calls and burials. So I panicked at the thought of photographing 31 widows, all on the same day.
I armed myself with assistants who are some of my closest friends, and embraced every moment of that day. It was only four and one-half months after the events of 9-11 when we gathered stylists with racks of clothes, makeup artists with their gear, and packed everyone into a big studio dressing room.
What I remember now, despite feeling somewhat mortified by the idea of offering these grieving women hairdo’s and makeup like we were doing a fashion shoot, was the unbelievably moving conversations they were having.
They had their grief in common, but also their everyday living and survival instincts. They brought their children, mementos of their husbands, their babysitters. Most had never met one another, but had been joined together in the minds of people worldwide as the pregnant widows of 9/11.
Last week I had a photo shoot on a terrace up high, looking over the Twin Towers site. Being there reminded me how even now, eight years later, I feel grateful for the experience of being with this remarkable group of women who were thrust together into a sisterhood not of their own making. Yet somehow they proudly stood there all together for the camera, as mothers have for generations, to portray their husband’s legacies.
FROM THE PEOPLE SHOOT, BY ERICA BERGER:
(Click the first thumbnail to start the captioned slideshow, then toggle by the arrows from image to image.)
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Learn more about Erica at her own website, or in the gallery of childhood photos she did for The Sister Project.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I wept.
I will never forget.
I hope no one else will, either.
So touching. So very touching.
Beautiful, touching…..
In remembrance….
Moved me so much , I can’t imagine.
Hi Roadchick (I always start to type “Roachchick” when I attempt your name!); Mishelle, Corina, Deb. Thanks for the good wishes. My best sister-friend Erica has done such powerful images of women in many of her projects, I hope she’ll share more soon.
Oh, Erica. These are astonishing and remarkable photos. The addition of your own story of your early losses and the panic left behind, mixed in with the conversations these women, creates a unique imagery for the viewer/reader. Thank you for your honesty here, for sharing these photos, for the mix of the two. We are changed and changed again by this.
Thanks so much for all your kind comments. I think it is comforting for these women to know we still think of them.
My daughter called me from her high school newspaper room where the television was turned on before school…”Mom, you have to see, there is something terrible happening”. She was a junior in high school, we celebrated her birthday in subdued fashion only 4 days later.
I think of the boys and girls in the photos today, all of them in school by now, and think how life has changed for all of us in so many ways.
We lose a lot in living, but one thing we must never lose is our common sense of humanity. Every person involved in the horrific events of that day had a mother whose heart lurched when she heard the news.
Let us all work tirelessly to create a more peaceful world for all the mothers and all their children, everywhere.
Welcome to our Galleries, TexasDeb. Well said, to say the least. Life had indeed changed for all of us in so many ways. See you soon.